


Replica

by Havoka



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: 'D.Va' is actually a series of androids created to defend South Korea & keep civilian morale high, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-03-01 20:33:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 30,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13302669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Havoka/pseuds/Havoka
Summary: Hana Song is a face known around the world. A symbol of hope for a warn-torn country. The imperishable mascot in the never-ending battle for humanity. A celebrity soldier who's brought in enough funding and new recruits for South Korea to continuously defend itself against the colossal omnic that plagues it.Hana Song is the face of humanity's will to survive.Hana Song died five years ago.





	1. The Clone Factory

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone! This is a fic that I've been tinkering with for months and months now. It's a bit of an odd premise, but I'm hoping it'll work out as well as I've envisioned it to.
> 
> As always, comments are GREATLY appreciated! Thanks for taking the time to check out my story!

“What’s up, guys? This is D.Va, coming at you with another round of… _colossal omnic combat!_ ”

The chat sidebar exploded. Everyone loved her combat streams. They were fast-paced, exciting, and dangerous – though Hana rarely felt any fear. In fact, not much really fazed her at all. She could recall watching a fellow pilot go down right in front of her the last time the omnic attacked, and yet she had still kept fighting, and continued streaming. She lived only for the thrill of victory. Nothing in the world satisfied her more than winning.

The colossal omnic had spent the last nine months under the sea, preparing itself for this attack. Although it had been less than a year, somehow it felt as though that battle had taken place a lifetime ago.

Nevertheless, Hana was ready.

The colossal omnic rotated its massive metal body, slow but sure. It fired off a round of blasts. Hana activated her defense matrix, absorbing the projectiles to render them harmless. Her eyes tracked the movement of each bullet with almost inhuman precision, her fingers flying over the MEKA’s dashboard controls.

A small, cocky smile curved the edges of her mouth. “Too slow!”

Once again her chat erupted, caps lock and emojis dominating the sidebar.

The omnic was momentarily distracted by another pilot. Hana used that as an opportunity to dive in and land some close-range shots. The omnic took one step back, its gigantic metal claws crushing an evacuated tourist shop by the seashore. It was clear no real damage had been inflicted on the living fortress of steel.

Tracking her with its solid red “eyes”, the omnic turned and fired off a series of missiles at Hana’s mech. Hana pulled up her matrix as fast as she could, but three missiles got through, exploding on contact. The ensuing flashes and smoke screen blinded Hana. The mech’s windshield was smattered with soot, further impeding her vision. She ended up grazing one of the omnic’s legs, throwing her off-course.

Coughing, Hana nonetheless made sure to reassure her audience. “Ha, this is nothing! A couple of weak little missiles won’t…”

A bizarre sound filled her ears – or more like filled her mind. A series of loud, piercing beeps and screeches like metal scraping metal penetrated her thoughts. Her words trailed off as she struggled to process where the sound was coming from. It sounded as though it were somehow inside and outside of her at once.

Her brief disorientation gave the omnic ample time to counterattack. Forgoing projectiles, it turned and swung one mighty metal “arm” straight at Hana. She attempted to boost out of its path, but the omnic connected just enough with the bulky pink machine to crack the windshield, shifting the air pressure inside. The mech flew in a lopsided manner, like a wounded insect.

Hana couldn’t spare more than a glance at her chat, but she noticed one message repeated in all caps. “ **IS DVA OK?!?!?** ”

“Don’t worry, guys!” Even in such a precarious situation Hana felt little fear. “No cranky, oversized robot is ever gonna…”

The beeping sounds grew louder. They had an odd rhythm to them, flowing almost like a language.

Steering the mech with one hand, Hana’s other hand opened communications with the other pilots. “ _Hey guys?_ ” she asked in her native tongue. “ _Is anyone else hearing that awful beeping noise?”_

Jun-seo was the first to answer her. “ _I don’t hear anything.”_

Damaged as it was, her MEKA was not able to sustain itself in the air. She was descending far too quickly to reach land. Hana began preparing herself for a water landing. “Okay guys, the stream might cut out for a bit, but I’ll promise I’ll be just–”

Something hit the mech with the weight of a building. Hana’s head snapped forward, slamming the dashboard. She recovered quickly, but it took only a moment for her to realize the colossal omnic had latched on to her…and was pushing her down.

Her mech hit the water with a massive splash – and then all was quiet. Water flooded into the cockpit. Hana quickly unbuckled herself, noticing in passing that the stream was actually still running. As she ejected from the rear hatch of the mech the colossal omnic pushed it down into the depths of the ocean, the displaced water sucking Hana’s comparatively tiny body down with it. She attempted to swim to the surface, but down in the lightless depths of the ocean she found she could not tell what was up or down. Her confusion gave way to panic as a deep-rooted survival instinct kicked in and she began pulling desperately toward whatever looked like sunlight.

The waves of shifting water must have been messing with her eyes. Her vision was starting to cut out, patches of total blackness impeding her ability to navigate. The world around her then began to flicker and stutter, like a weak internet connection. She felt a terrible sense of wrongness. _I can’t do this. I’m not meant to be this deep._ Her entire body felt waterlogged, and it seemed to be interrupting her muscles and nerve impulses. She could barely move.

The bunny logo on her chest served a purpose other than aesthetics. It was a panic button. When pressed, all of her fellow pilots, as well as the MEKA engineering team, would be alerted and given her exact coordinates at the time of the press. In theory, someone would come to the aid of the pilot who pushed the button and rescue them.

Her arm could barely execute the basic mobility function, but she managed to press the button.

Though muffled by the deep water, the _beep_ it produced drew the attention of the colossal omnic. It lifted its mighty foot from the depths, and then dropped it down on her.

_No!_

The last thing Hana saw was the seafloor racing at her, and then hitting her with enough force to crush her entire body on impact.

* * *

 

_“…knew this model wouldn’t be enough…”_

_“…got her working, but there’s too much damage to bother…”_

_“We’ll have to get another online to…”_

_“What happened?”_

_“Eight is totaled.”_

* * *

 

Hana opened her eyes. She was alone in a dark, cavernous room that smelled of burning metal. Things were moving in the darkness – mechanically, with a steady rhythm.

She was attached to some sort of conveyer belt that moved sideways along the wall. Her arms and legs were bound with metal cuffs. Upon attempting to move them she found she lacked the energy to do so. In fact, her entire body felt drained.

There was a grinding sound coming from the next room. Things were moving in there, too. She could see the shadows of gigantic machines moving back and forth, waiting for something on the belt she was cuffed to.

She opened her mouth to speak – but instead of her own words, an utterly foreign sentence tumbled from her lips. “Internal battery level critical. Emergency power save mode enabled.”

_…What?_

The conveyer belt began to move. Hana was pulled along its length, down a dark corridor. A single set of flickering fluorescent lights overhead gave her a decent view of her body for the first time since waking. She was covered in scratches and what almost looked like cracks in her skin. Her bodysuit was torn and filthy, though oddly there did not seem to be any blood from her many cuts. And for as roughed up as she was, she also didn’t feel much pain.

More than anything else, she mostly just felt tired. She really, really wanted to sleep. Sleep and recharge.

As the belt pulled her into the next room Hana noticed something dangling on the far wall – an entire wall of somethings, in fact. She squinted, but her vision was still wavering. She was almost out of energy.

When she reached the end of the belt her cuffs released, dropping her to the floor like a ragdoll. _What’s going on…?_ She tried to cry out, to determine if she was truly alone, but all that emerged from between her lips was the same eerie message from before.

“Internal battery level critical. Emergency power save mode enabled.”

Her throat tightened with fear, something she was unaccustomed to. _This isn’t right. What’s wrong with me? Where am I?_

She struggled to move from the cold floor. Again her body did not respond.

For the first time in her short life Hana was feeling fear. True fear. There was something so fatalistic about the room she was in. So…final.

The lights overhead suddenly powered on. Hana gasped.

The things dangling from the wall were…her. A dozen bodies identical to hers, in her same body suit, dangling from metal beams like clothing hangers. Their eyes were open, but blank. They were not moving.

_What?! What is this?!?_

The giant machine in the center of the room reached an arm out toward her. Unable to fight it off, Hana was seized around the waist and lifted clean off the ground.

Her brain told her a proper human response might be to cry, but no tears came when she tried. So she tried to scream. This time she did not even get a bizarre warning message – no sound came out at all.

The machine pulled her over to a smaller, horizontal conveyer belt, where it deposited her without care. This belt led to a set of small doors in a giant steel device. Above the doors was a sign in Korean that read _Danger! High temperature – do not place hands on or inside machine._

Unable to move, Hana could only watch as she was carried toward the doors. The heat from within them was overpowering – her chest constricted as it overtook her.

The metal doors opened with an ominous scraping sound, and she soon realized the source of the heat.

She was being pushed directly into a furnace.

 _No! No!!_ Mustering every bit of strength she had, Hana managed to grip the wall of the machine with a few weak fingers. _I don’t understand! What’s happening to me??_

Her grip was weak, and it wasn’t long before her feet were dangling over the pit of fire in the heart of the furnace. _I don’t understand…I lost a battle with the colossal omnic and now I’m gonna be burned alive? I don’t wanna die…I don’t want to die…_

She couldn’t hold on any longer. The belt pulled her over the edge, dropping her down onto the boiling metal below.

Metal…but no flames. _Huh? They turned off?_

Before she could figure out what was going on, something materialized out of the air and landed on her stomach. Hana tried to lift her head to see it – only to realize that her body had disappeared. In mere milliseconds her entire form disintegrated. She was gone from the furnace, from the machine, from the room.

Instead she found herself staring up into the face of a violet-eyed woman with streaks of glowing purple embedded in her scalp and a grin that sent chills through Hana’s bones.

* * *

 

“Feeling better?”

Hana slowly sat up. The woman addressing her then was the one she had seen before losing consciousness. They were in a small, dark room with nothing but computer monitors and one single purple ceiling lamp as a light source.

The woman had some sort of hologram projection extending from her glove. It connected her to several major joints in Hana’s body.

“I can move now,” Hana murmured. “And talk. So yeah, I guess so?”

That got a chuckle out of the woman. “And they said you were _totaled!_ Those lazy bastards at MEKA just wanted an excuse to upgrade to the newest model.”

“What do you mean the ‘newest model’?” Visions of the lifeless clones from the boiler room struck Hana then. “What’s even going on?”

The woman touched a glowing pink nail to Hana’s chest. “Run diagnostics.”

Suddenly Hana’s mind was filled with strange information. “Manufacturer: Mobile Exo-Force of the Korean Army. Serial number DVA892A008. Chassis type: Android. System model ‘D.Va’, operating system: Exo-Force Custom Build 0.8.0.1. Date of manufacture 23/07/2075.”

“Oh wow, you’re just a baby! Only nine months old and they’re already trying to throw you in a furnace. I think even _I’d_ make a better parent than that.”

Once she was finished rattling off things she had no knowledge of, Hana fixed the woman with a pleading stare. “ _Please_ tell me what’s going on. I don’t want to be hanging around weird places like this! I want to go back home.”

The woman turned around and, with her hands linked behind her back, strolled over to a series of wall-mounted computer screens. “Oh, Hana,” she said, _tsk_ ing condescendingly, “you haven’t been ‘home’ in years.”

“What??” She had lost consciousness shortly after the woman had teleported her out of the boiler room, but it hadn’t been that long. It certainly hadn’t been _years._

Had it?

With a wave of the woman’s hand the screens all came alive. The one directly in front of her displayed a news article written in Korean. Hana leaned around the woman to read it. “’ _Colossal Omnic’ Devastates Busan, Other Seaside Cities, Leaves Thousands Dead and More Missing._ That was the attack when it disabled the autopiloted drones, five years ago.”

The woman gestured then to the screen beside it. “’Miracle Girl’: Devastated South Korea Rallies Around Pro Gamer Hana Song, Survivor of Busan Attack.” Beneath the headline was a picture of Hana standing before a crowd of people, addressing them with a smile on her face and determination in her eyes.

“I…barely remember this.” Hana glanced over at yet another screen. _Professional Gamer Hana ‘D.Va’ Song Shocks World, Announces Plans to Become MEKA Drone Pilot._

The woman was still facing away, but there was a sadistic smile in her voice. “Notice how the first two articles were printed almost three months apart?”

“Yeah?”

“Kinda funny it took Hana three months to let the public know she was safe.”

“I…” Hana racked her brain, trying to recall the events of five years ago. “I don’t remember any of this.”

“I don’t blame you.” The woman finally turned around. “You weren’t there.”

The screens changed to reveal new things – blueprints of some kind. An outline…shaped like her body. Details written in all around her about small things. Her exact hair and eye color. Her height and weight. Her precise body measurements, right down to her bra size.

“Have you caught up with me yet?” the woman asked.

It all fit together, but Hana couldn’t accept it. Her brain refused to accept it.

The woman came over to her. She pushed a sensitive spot on the back of Hana’s neck. Suddenly a patch of skin on her chest slid back, revealing a series of complex metal innards.

Hana stared down at it in disbelief. She touched her insides lightly, with uncertain fingers – she was warm inside, and vibrating slightly. Like a well-oiled machine.

“I…I’m not human.”

“I always thought you seemed just a little too unfazed by all the crap that got thrown at you. Imagine my surprise when I hacked a totally ‘unrelated’ company and found out they’d made parts for you!”

Hana could not look away from the circuits inside of her. “What…company?”

The woman pointed inside Hana’s chest cavity. Hana craned her neck to read the tiny imprint on one of her parts. _OMNICA CORP._

Hana recoiled. “I’m an _omnic?!_ ”

The woman threw her hands up and smiled. “Surprise!”

“This…this can’t…I thought they were shut down!”

“It takes a _lot_ to knock out a multi-billion dollar corporation.” The woman examined her fingernails. “I would know.”

An _omnic._ The same type of creature that destroyed her home and country. The most hated sentient organisms in the world. “So…the real Hana…”

“Died in the colossal omnic attack that knocked out the autopiloted MEKA drones.”

“Why did they decide to…why… _her_ …?”

“From the intel I’ve gathered it seems like it was kind of a perfect storm of factors. You were already a cultural icon in gaming circles, and the Songs were willing to invest everything they had into trying to bring their daughter back in whatever way they could. They provided MEKA with DNA samples, which apparently went into creating your skin and hair. Yeah, there’s a reason you don’t look like most other omnics.”

“So I’m at least partially made from the real Hana?”

“At the most basic level, yeah.” The woman sat down in her computer chair, idly shaking one booted foot. “The other factor, why the Korean government agreed to go along with it in the first place, well, I found some classified e-mails from back then…I guess they thought you would make a great face for the country’s rebuilding and defense. Who wouldn’t want a cute, peppy, popular young girl as a mascot-slash-propaganda-tool to expand the military budget and give it a nice big smiley face for the world to fall in love with? It’s honestly pretty ingenious. And hey, it worked!”

Hana reached down and slid her chest cavity shut. “This doesn’t make sense, though,” she murmured. “If I was manufactured just nine months ago…”

“Oh, you’re not the first D.Va android to exist.” The woman pulled up another document on-screen. A spreadsheet. “You’re actually Hana 8.”

“Eight?” Hana gaped. “What happened to the…”

“Either killed in action, retired due to ‘obsolescence’, or deemed too dangerous and destroyed.”

“Dangerous?”

The woman eyed her, still wearing that malicious little smile. “This is what I’ve been wanting to talk about.”

The computer screens all unified into one giant image. It was a video, what looked like security footage, of Hana sitting at a wooden table in an office-like setting.

Hana recognized the location – it was the office building the higher-ups at MEKA operated out of – but she could not recall this specific memory. She – or rather, the presumed other Hana – looked dismayed and mildly upset. _I can’t remember the last time I was upset about something._ Even her attempted murder at the hands of MEKA hadn’t set her back that far emotionally. _Guess I’m not…programmed…for that sort of thing._ It was still such a difficult concept to accept. _I’m not human. I’m a robot. I’m an **omnic**._

“This girl here?” The woman gestured to the Hana in the video. “This is your predecessor. Hana 7.”

The girl tapped her nails on the table, glancing about the room.

“What happened to her?”

“She was the most advanced D.Va model MEKA ever constructed. She had all the functionality of a real, human girl. An incredible range of emotions, acute intelligence, even the ability to experience romantic attraction. It was nuts.”

A man Hana didn’t recognize entered the frame, taking a seat opposite Hana 7. For a while neither of them spoke. Then Hana 7 narrowed her eyes at the floor and said, _“I want to be able to meet my fans.”_

“ _It isn’t safe for you to just walk into a crowd like that.”_ The man spoke Korean, leading Hana to wonder how much the woman she was with could understand. “ _Someone could have hurt you_.”

Hana 7 did not meet his gaze.

 _“Please don’t do it again, Hana,”_ the man said. _“We’re concerned for you and your safety. Your country needs you. And it needs you in one piece.”_

“I’m assuming they didn’t want her near people because up close someone might be able to tell she’s not human?” Hana asked.

“That, and they didn’t want to risk any damage to their merchandise. You Hanas are an expensive investment.”

The screens loaded another video, one that seemed to take place in the same room, but on a different day. This time Hana 7 was smirking, kicking her legs beneath the table. Like the first video, she was soon joined by an employee of the MEKA program – this time it was a woman. Hana had seen her around before, but she could not recall her name.

 _“Hana,”_ the woman said gently, _“what happened today?”_

Hana 7 giggled behind a hand. _“What do you mean?”_

The woman leveled her with a stare. _“You can’t be going out to concerts without protection. You’re a prime target for all sorts of international threats.”_

 _“Oh, psh.”_ Hana waved her off. _“I was in the VIP section. And if I got escorted in and out by a bunch of bodyguards I wouldn’t have been able to hang out backstage with Lúcio afterward!”_

“Lúcio…” Hana stared at the screens. “I know him. We’re friends. I don’t remember ever going to one of his shows, though…”

“I’m not surprised they wiped that memory when they uploaded 7’s memories into you. They wanted you to be the docile, obedient D.Va Hana 7 never was.”

She clicked on something, which pulled up another clip. Same room, same other Hana.

“ _You’re saying the colossal omnic…talked to you?”_

Hana 7 nodded, staring down at her folded hands. “ _I don’t know what it was saying, but it wasn’t just random sounds. It was a language._ ”

“ _None of the other pilots–”_

 _“I know. It only talked to me.”_ Hana 7 lifted her gaze to affix the man across from her with an intense stare. “ _We didn’t know it was capable of communication. We obviously can’t defeat it. If we could learn its language, or recruit some omnics that speak it, maybe we can reason with it. Or at least find out what it wants with us.”_

_“We don’t reason with hostile omnics, Hana. It wouldn’t work and it would be a PR disaster. The people of Korea would lose their trust in us.”_

_“So we’re just gonna keep fighting an unwinnable war.”_

_“We **will** win. Eventually that omnic won’t be able to adapt fast enough, and we’ll–”_

_“The colossal omnic tried to talk to me. It clearly has something to say. We’re being stupid by not listening.”_

_“Hana–”_

Hana 7 got up and walked away. The video kept running as the man wrote something down and then pulled out his phone. As it was dialing someone he reached over and cut the recording, ending the video.

 _Those weird noises I heard…_ Hana thought back to her last encounter with the omnic. _I knew they didn’t sound random. They had a pattern to them._

“Who are you, anyway?” Hana turned her attention to the woman. “Why do you care about all this?”

The woman folded her arms, paused a moment, then pointed to a mini-fridge at the far end of the room. “Go get me a soda.”

“What? Get it yourself!”

Like before, the woman’s fingertips cast thin lasers of light outward, settling this time on Hana’s forehead. Suddenly her thoughts went fuzzy. “Initializing manual override,” she mumbled. “Awaiting command prompt.”

The woman snapped her fingers and pointed again at the fridge. “Soda. Get me one.”

Hana’s body moved of its own – or rather, of the woman’s – accord. She rose stiffly from the floor she’d been sitting on and shuffled over to the refrigerator. Upon opening it she grabbed the first can she saw and brought it over to the woman.

“Thanks!” She popped the lid open and took a swig. “Ahh. You ever had apple soda? It sounds like it’d be weird but I don’t know, I love it.”

Hana had never been a big eater. She hardly understood people eating for fun, or even for the taste. _Guess now I know why._

“So are you gonna answer my questions?” she asked, ignoring the woman’s small talk.

Setting the can down beside her on the computer desk, the woman shrugged. “Not like it’s any big deal – or any of your business – but you can call me Sombra. And as for why I’m interested in you? Well, there’s a _lot_ of reasons for that.”

“Such as?”

Sombra tapped her chin. “Where do I start? I’m kind of a vigilante, and I try to keep an eye on governments and corporations around the world. An adorable, fighty little mascot like you is a really _interesting_ choice for a military branch. For a while I didn’t understand it, but one day it hit me. It makes sending teenagers into life-or-death combat a lot more palatable to the masses when the face of the operation never has any normal human reactions to trauma.”

“That makes no sense. Why would they go through all the trouble of commissioning dozens of omnic clones just to keep people feeling positive about the war?”

“Okay, one, civilian morale during times of war is a _huge_ deal. And two, think about it this way. You know how the United States military uses war games and shooters to entice young people to join them?”

“Um, no. I didn’t know that.”

“Well, it’s true. Anyway, they make it look all cool and badass, and you get a taste of what it’s like in a ‘realistic’ setting. It glamorizes it, makes soldiers and the military out to be these untouchable heroes. Makes young kids say ‘Hey, I could do that in real life!’”

Hana didn’t say anything. Her thoughts were already where Sombra seemed to be leading them.

“You have any idea how many human kids D.Va has probably inspired to go throw their lives away fighting an unwinnable war against the colossal omnic? They don’t know you’re not human. They don’t realize Hana Song has died eight times already. They see you doing all that cool stuff in your livestreams, being a rich and famous international hero, and they think to themselves, ‘I want to do that!’”

Hana’s eyes trained on the ground. There was nothing to say in response. Sombra’s words were true.

“It’s worth the cost of churning out D.Vas to keep the people of your country – hell, the people of the world – from realizing the real cost of MEKA’s inadequacies. All the deaths of young people in the program, and all the trauma among the survivors. As long as they push Hana Song to the forefront, and the world sees that she’s just fine and dandy, the public doesn’t think about the ones who challenged the colossal omnic and didn’t come back. And the young people of the world all want to be the next Hana Song.”

Her initial instinct was to defend MEKA – after all, it had been a part of her life since she, well, some form of her, was a child. Since she was born into a country who relied on it for survival. But she couldn’t help but think about the fact that they had been willing to – no, _had_ – thrown her away like garbage. _Burned_ her like garbage. All to keep up a massive lie.

“There’s a better way to do things,” Sombra continued. “Exposing what MEKA is doing right now will force them to rethink their strategy and come up with a new plan. Or, you know, shut down. That’s always a positive outcome.” She returned her attention to her computer, typing away with her lengthy nails. “Another reason I wanted you is, hey, they were throwing you out anyway. One military branch’s trash is an underground vigilante’s potential newest ally.”

“I’m not interested in being your ally.” For some reason she was suddenly massively homesick. “I want to go back.” The train of thought loaded automatically. “My country needs me. MEKA needs–”

“MEKA washed their hands of you.” On the screen appeared a scan of some handwritten Korean notes, translated to Spanish beneath each line. “I want you to read all of this, Hana 8.”

Hana squinted at the screen.

_Build 0.8.0._

_Major changes:_

  * _Irrelevant emotion cores have been removed. This should lead to a more stable build with fewer bugs. Anger, sadness, and curiosity have been scaled back eighty percent. Capability for human romantic and sexual attraction was an unintended result in 0.7 and should never have been included. It has been removed._
  * _Intelligence has been tweaked – overall IQ should remain about the same, but 0.8’s emphasis will be on appealing to a wide audience. Side note: 0.8’s vernacular library has been updated with 79 new slang and informal English and Korean terms, to continue to appeal to a younger audience._
  * _Loyalty core has been amplified. This loyalty will occur organically in 0.8, but should be reinforced as much as possible to prevent another 0.7 situation._



Hana stared at it for a long while. “So I’m a dumbed-down Hana 7,” she eventually mumbled.

“Glad _you_ said it.” Sombra rolled her shoulders in their sockets. “Hana 7 was the pinnacle of everything they’d been trying to achieve in the D.Va line. She was smart, funny, charismatic, everything they could have hoped for in an artificial intelligence trying to pass for human.”

“But she was _too_ smart.” That much seemed obvious.

Sombra nodded. “She was made to be like a real teenage girl – so she did what teenage girls do best. She rebelled, questioned authority, went out without permission, and had tons of emotions that nobody knew how to handle.”

Hana gazed up at her own development notes. “She’s dead now.”

“Well, yes and no.”

“What? She isn’t dead?”

“She’s dead. But she was way too interesting a specimen for MEKA to just get rid of. And I may or may not have access to the backup of her memories and personality core.” Her left hand hovered over a locked desk drawer. With a bit of deft fingerwork she managed to pop the drawer open without even touching the lock. She then reached inside and retrieved a small, unassuming pink metal orb.

“Wow.” Hana looked it over. “So that’s her whole entire self?”

“Yours, too. In fact they’re interchangeable.”

A gut reaction welled up inside Hana. “You stole that from MEKA. That’s…that’s not right!”

“Whoa, down girl. You’re not MEKA’s guard dog anymore.”

She felt like she should be angry at the woman, but she just couldn’t stay mad at anything. Her emotions were as weak and watery as always.

“No offense, 8,” Sombra continued, “but you’re not what I’m after. I’ve had this core for a long time now – I just needed a body MEKA wouldn’t miss. 7 is the superior build in every way. And I’m a girl who just has to have the best rig.”

“W-wait,” Hana backed up until she bumped against the wall of the tiny room. “You’re gonna put Hana 7’s OS inside my body?”

“That’s the plan.” Sombra reached out and touched Hana’s forehead again. “Force shutdown.”

“No! Don’t take me out of my body! I’ll help you!” Hana tried to push her away, but her body did not respond. Her vision and hearing began to fade out.

She slid down the wall and slumped to the floor. As Sombra reached for her, Hana heard her say,

“ _Don’t worry, I’ll be holding on to your core, too. You won’t be going anywhere._ ”

 

* * *

 

“Wakey wakey.”

A series of letters and numbers scrolled across her vision. _Booting from disk … … … System install complete. Launching OS…_

Hana opened her eyes. Before her stood a woman, seemingly human, watching her expectantly.

“Who are you?” Hana immediately asked. “Where am I?”

The woman smiled a devious little smile. “I’m Sombra. Consider me a friend.”

Hana looked around. “The last thing I remember is…fire…”

“I booted you from a cloud backup of your OS. The original core was burned up when MEKA threw you in the incinerator and replaced you with Hana 8.”

Memories flooded her as they loaded into her brain. She remembered the fire. The incinerator. The terrifying room and its conveyer belt of doom that dropped her into her final resting place, where she was burned to irrecoverable ash.

She glanced down at her body. Her hands were different. She was also severely banged up in multiple places, with injuries she had no memory of sustaining.

“This isn’t my body.”

“No. It’s Hana 8’s.”

“Did you put me in it?”

“Yeah. I think you still have a lot to offer this world. A _lot_ more than–”

“What did you do with my sister?”

Sombra raised an eyebrow. “Hm?”

“You said this was Hana 8’s body. What did you do with her?”

A slow grin spread across Sombra’s face. “I can see why MEKA didn’t like you.”

“ _You’re_ not gonna like me, either.” Hana was on her feet in an instant, fists clenched.

That only seemed to amuse Sombra. The woman reached out and tapped a finger against Hana’s forehead. “Initiate manual override.”

Hana’s vision flashed a warning red. “External manual override failed.” She narrowed her eyes. “Access _denied._ ”

Upon realizing her override would not carry through, Sombra pulled her hand back and rolled her eyes. “Right. _You’ve_ got all the tamper protection and whatnot. Man, Hana 8 really _was_ a piece of junk compared to you.”

“Don’t talk about her like that.”

Sombra slid herself up onto her computer desk and took a nonchalant sip of soda. “Look, we might not get along. That’s fine by me. But if you want to expose MEKA and free your ‘sisters’ from this military-industrial stranglehold then you’re gonna need my resources.”

“And you need me because…?”

“You’re the undeniable proof.”

Hana glanced up at the screens displaying an eerie purple skull logo. “Where is Hana 8, exactly?” she asked.

“Don’t worry. She’s safe.”

Hana dropped her gaze to Sombra. “I want her.”

Sombra snickered. “Okay, why?”

“I want to keep her with me. If you don’t let me do that then it’s no deal and I’m going to run off to that omnic monastery I read about before they deactivated me.”

Sombra was clearly enjoying their back-and-forth. “’Kay, how about this. I’ll give you a copy.” She opened a drawer and retrieved a small pink sphere. Hana held a hand out, and Sombra dropped it carelessly into her palm. “No offense to her, but Hana 8 is pretty useless to me anyway.”

Hana closed her fingers around Hana 8’s core. _Don’t worry, little sis. I’ll keep you safe._

With her free hand she reached around and pushed the unmarked spot on her neck that served as a secret button. Her chest cover slid open. Carefully Hana tucked the orb inside the ribs of her steel skeleton. “And another thing,” she added, ignoring the visible amusement of the human woman she was addressing, “we’re not leaving Korea without any protection against the colossal omnic. If exposing MEKA means the people of my country will be left vulnerable to attacks then I’d rather leave things the way they are.”

At that Sombra outright laughed. “There’s a _lot_ you don’t know about this world, Hana 7. Sticking with me you might learn that sometimes things that seem to happen for no reason are actually somebody’s direct intentions.”

“I know all I need to know.” The answer was a non-answer, but Hana was much too stubborn to give up the argument to this smug-ass lady.

Sombra seemed to pick right up on that. “Right. Of course a baby omnic who was built two years ago and deactivated for the last nine months knows everything about the world.”

“Yeah. I do.”

“Look,” Sombra said, her tone softening a bit, “I get it. I was a teenager once, too. Being difficult is like, your thing at that age. But like I said, I really do want to be a friend to you, Hana. I think we can both get a lot out of each other. So tell me…what do _you_ want to do right now?”

“What do _I_ want?” Surprisingly enough, no one had ever really asked that of her. She always had duties and responsibilities and expectations. It had always been about what the world wanted – and in some cases needed – from her. Never the other way around.

“I want to save my sisters,” she murmured, “and I want to keep my country safe…”

“Well I can definitely help you with at least one of those things.”

“I can’t leave Korea defenseless, Sombra.”

“You won’t. Hey”–She tapped her chin with one clawed fingertip–“I think once you come back from the body shop you should meet my boss. He’s got an interesting philosophy. I think he’d really take to a soldier who was built for never-ending combat.”

“The body shop?”

“You’re still kind of beat up, _amiga_. There’s a neighborhood on the other side of town where the omnics keep to themselves. In it there’s a body shop where they do repairs on themselves and other bots.”

“So I’m supposed to go up to a bunch of random omnics and tell them to mess with my body?”

“From what I’ve seen omnics tend to stick together, at least a lot better than humans do. They’ll take care of ya.”

Everything was happening so suddenly. Hana’s processing powers were lightning-quick, but all this was a bit much even for her.

“Why are you just gonna let me go?” she asked. “You don’t know that I’ll ever come back to you.”

“Aren’t friends supposed to trust each other?” Sombra’s smile was almost tangibly slimy. “I trust you, Hana.”

“…You installed some kind of tracking device in me or something, didn’t you.”

“Hell yeah I did. I’m not letting tech as expensive as you just run away and get lost somewhere.” She fished around in a drawer. “So go get yourself patched up. When you come back I’ll introduce you to my…coworkers.”

Hana sighed. Her right hand settled over her chest, where Hana 8 lay dormant inside of her. “Okay.” Hesitating a moment, she then added, “Thank you.”

“Huh? For what?” Sombra was smirking, but her confusion was genuine.

“For saving me and Hana 8? If it wasn’t for you I’d still be trapped in one of MEKA’s archive rooms inside a dormant personality core. And Hana 8…I’m assuming she was headed for obsolescence.”

“Hm. Don’t thank me.” Sombra crossed her arms and angled herself away from Hana. “I have my own agenda.”

“I know. But I still appreciate it.”

Sombra waved her off.

With a tiny hint of a smile on her face, Hana folded her arms as well. “So…you gonna teleport me out of here or something? Or do I have to tunnel my way out?”

Sombra threw her a small purple device. “Use this to come back. It’s called a translocator. Don’t let it fall into the wrong hands. I’ll self-destruct it if I have to.”

“Sure thing, ‘friend’.”

With that Hana pushed a button on the translocator. A bizarre tingling filled her body – then she felt herself dissolve into particles and dissipate from the room.

Folding her arms behind her head, Sombra leaned back in her computer chair and chuckled to herself. “God, what a dumbass.”


	2. The Body Shop

Hana 7 found herself transported right outside of an unadorned, inconspicuous-looking building. Immediately she noted that she was not in Korea anymore – the signs were all in Spanish. _What kind of robot can’t read every major language?_ With a sigh, she took a guess and followed a random street sign.

This place was a lot different from her home. It was clear that the omnic crisis had taken a huge toll on it, but unlike South Korea, which was still locked in an active battle, this place, like wildflowers growing out of cracked cement, was slowly beginning to flourish again. There were children playing in the streets while adults watched from weathered front steps. A cat wandered the sidewalk near what appeared to be a housing complex. It took great interest in Hana. Hana knelt and gave it a quick scratch under the chin, then continued on her way.

_The rest of the world is so different from home._ The thought excited her a little. _I hope I get to see it all someday._

“Excuse me?”

A tiny voice with a thick accent spurred Hana to turn around. A little girl stood in the middle of the street, staring at her with wide eyes.

“Hiya!” Hana gave her a friendly wave, although a part of her was paranoid the girl could somehow tell she wasn’t human. Thankfully the sun was strong, so she couldn’t see many details of the girl, and hoped the girl couldn’t necessarily get a good look at her either.

The girl broke out into a big smile. “You’re D.Va!”

After all she had been through, Hana had nearly forgotten she was an international celebrity. “Yeah, I am!” She returned the girl’s smile as best she could.

“Why are you _here?_ ” The girl dared to inch a few steps closer, looking Hana over with sheer amazement.

“Oh, uh…” Hana drew back a little, tapping her fingertips together. “It’s a…secret mission. So you can’t tell anyone you saw me, okay?”

“Ooh, okay!” The girl squealed. “I love your videos! The colossal omnic is _so cool!_ ”

A chill ran down Hana’s spine at the mere mention of the creature. “Don’t know if I’d exactly describe it as…”

The closer the girl came to her, Hana began to notice something off about her eyes. They didn’t have pupils. They were just glowing white lights.

“You…” Hana pointed a limp finger at the girl. “…You’re an omnic.”

The girl nodded enthusiastically. “Uh-huh!” Her hands moved to cover her mouth as she giggled. Hana realized her limbs had visible outlines where the pieces of metal had been welded together.

Hana stared, dumbfounded. “I didn’t even know they made kid omnics,” was all she could think to say.

“Oh, I wasn’t made by humans,” the girl said. When she shook her head the evening sunlight reflected off her skin, casting a glint over her shadow on the street. “I was made in the body shop!”

_That’s the place Sombra mentioned._ Regardless, Hana decided to play it safe and not reveal too much. “The what?”

“The body shop! It’s in El Barrio Ómnico.” The girl’s eyes glowed brighter at that. “Oh, do you want to see it? Or are you busy?”

“Oh, actually my mission is, um, _in_ the body shop!”

“Really??”

“Uh-huh. I just didn’t know where it was. Or, uh, what it was.”

“I’ll show you!” The girl held out her hand. Hana took it, and as she did she realized the metals used to make the girl’s skin were mismatched and uneven. It was almost as if she’d been built from scrap metal. Maybe she had.

The girl skipped merrily down the street. Hana hurried along beside her.

* * *

 

The “body shop” was a clearly modified auto garage. The little girl omnic led Hana to a side door with a sign above it, written in a strange symbol language Hana had never seen before.

“Can I go in here?” she asked the girl uncertainly.

“Of course! All omnics are welcome to come to the body shop whenever they need to.”

Hana froze. Her eyes slid over to the girl, who was watching her with a smile and those blank, glowing eyes of hers.

“So you can tell?”

The girl’s eyes changed to a warm yellow color. “I couldn’t tell from watching your videos, but I just scanned you for human vital signs and didn’t find any.” A metallic whirring from her vocal chords emulated laughter. “Unless you’re a _zombie!_ ”

“No.” Hana shook her head. “No, I’m…what you said. An omnic.”

“That’s so cool!” Apparently through waiting for Hana, the girl pulled the door open herself. Hana took a hesitant step inside after her.

The place was lit by a strip of flickering, industrial-strength LEDs casting light onto an open garage floor, which was covered in oil stains and bits of scrap metal. The walls of a small room adjacent to the main one were flashing with light, and Hana could see sparks flying from within – someone was welding. Floating over the various tinkering sounds was a radio that sounded to be on its last leg, bleating retro music from straight out of the 20th century.

Beside the radio someone was seated on an overturned milk crate, tightening the screws on what looked to be some sort of robotic dog head. At Hana’s entrance they lifted their safety goggles and fixed on her. Their face was fairly typical for a civilian omnic – silver metal with two hollow slats for eyes, a clenched mouth, and a square formation of glowing blue lights on their forehead.

They looked to the girl beside Hana, then emitted a series of high-pitched mechanical sounds. Hana’s eyes went wide. _Those noises…they’re like the ones the colossal omnic made._

“It’s okay,” the girl said in English, “this is D.Va! And she’s an omnic!”

The mechanic’s forehead lights flashed. They stared at her for a moment. Then, in a gruff, grating tone that sounded to Hana like two sheets of metal scraping against one another, they spoke. “You don’t look like any omnic I’ve ever seen.”

The welding in the next room paused. Another omnic peered out at them. “What’s a human doing here?” They spoke in plain English as well.

“She says it’s an omnic. Doesn’t show any human vitals, but…”

“You bots really can’t tell one of your own when you see her?”

A new omnic had just sauntered in the back door. This one was dressed in a grease-stained pair of overalls, and had red scrap metal in the shape of a mohawk adorning their head. Their arms were engraved all over, resembling two full-sleeve tattoos. Unlike the other mechanics this one had a more feminine voice and build, though their arms were disproportionately large, as though extra layers of metal had been welded on to them.

“This is D.Va!” the girl repeated. “She said she’s on a top-secret mission to the body shop!”

The feminine omnic approached Hana, tossing aside the rag she had been holding. “Oh yeah? What kind of ‘top-secret mission’?”

“Um, well I was referred here by a friend–”

The omnic’s eyes brightened. “Really? Who sent ya our way?”

“That doesn’t really matter…what matters is that I need someone who can help fix the outer layer of my chassis. It’s kinda banged up.”

The omnic threw her arms up. “Well you came to the right place, sister. Aesthetic mods are my specialty!”

Hana mustered a small smile. “So you’ll help me?”

“You are doing _me_ a favor, my friend. I haven’t done an overhaul in ages!” The omnic took Hana by the hand. “Come on, let’s do a consult!”

* * *

 

“So what’s your name, sister?”

Hana sat still as the omnic took her measurements. “Hana,” she said. “Well, Hana 7.”

“Nice to meet you, Hana 7. I’m Kitt!”

“’Kitt’?” Hana followed her with her eyes. “Does that stand for something?”

“Ha, no. My ‘real’ name is Omnica Female Autonomous Android Unit Model 301, Version 1.0.1.4. But I saw this really cool old human movie on the holovid one time where there was this badass AI controlling a car they called KITT. And I really liked it – and I mean, I love cars, I do work in a body shop. So I just started calling myself Kitt.”

“Huh. Whatever works for you, I guess.” Hana hesitated a moment, then said, “I’m named after a dead human girl.”

“Oh.” Kitt paused her measuring. “Well that’s a hell of a conversation starter, at least.”

“Human Hana Song died during the colossal omnic’s worst attack on South Korea, five years ago.”

“Oh God, that colossal omnic – the kids in this neighborhood are _obsessed_ with it. They think it’s just the coolest thing ever.”

“It’s not. It’s horrible, and it’s keeping my country in a permanent state of war.”

“Well, hey, it’s the reason you were built, right?”

To that Hana had no answer.

“I wonder what makes that one omnic so bloodthirsty even all these years after the crisis. The rest of us aren’t like that…” Kitt paused, then chuckled to herself. “Although if I had been around back then it might’ve been fun to jump into the chaos here and there. I don’t have any guns built into me, though. Most I could probably do is take a socket wrench to a human’s kneecaps or something.”

“It tried to talk to me once,” Hana continued. “But I couldn’t understand it.”

“Why not? Your language discs messed up?”

“I don’t think I _have_ any language discs other than Korean and English.”

“What??” Kitt leaned down into her face. “Okay, before we worry about fixing your appearance maybe I should check out just what’s under the hood first.”

“How would you do that?”

Kitt fished a screwdriver out of her toolbox. “Unfortunately I’ll have to open you up. I’ve got some stuff you can wear, because you’re gonna have to take off that funky jumpsuit.” She grabbed a loose pair of pants that looked like they’d been used as an oil rag more than once. “I only have to open up your chest cavity, so waist-down you can be covered.” Next she picked up two rounded metal plates off the work bench. “Also unfortunately the way omnic chest plates open, you can’t wear a bra. These are adhesive, so you can…” She held them up to Hana. “…These might be a little big for you. Let me get you some smaller ones.”

Hana rolled her eyes.

“Here we go.” Kitt handed Hana two small plates made from patchwork scrap metal. Then she turned around, allowing Hana the privacy to unzip out of her bodysuit.

Once the suit was off Hana glanced down at her bare flesh. Nearly every part of her body was battered and dented in some way. _God, Hana 8…what did you go through?_

She wondered if Hana 8 had even known she was an omnic. Hana 7 had all but figured it out back when she was still the current model, which was probably why they were so eager to “retire” her. Looking at her body, at least when it wasn’t damaged, though, it was easy to understand why someone _wouldn’t_ ever be able to guess her omnic status. Her skin felt so supple, so organic. She didn’t look like any of the other omnic models. _I wonder what we’re made of…_

“Can I turn back around?”

“Oh, uh, hold on a sec.” She pulled on the pants, which were far too long and a bit baggy, and affixed the metal plates over her breasts. They covered just enough. “Okay. I’m ready.”

“All right.” Kitt turned back around. “Sorry there’s no better way to do this.”

“It’s okay. I appreciate you helping me at all.”

Kitt led her over to a mini hydraulic press that was just big enough for a person – well, omnic. Hana climbed up onto it and lay down on her back. “Is this gonna hurt?”

“I’m going to deactivate your pain receptors as soon as I open you up.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“Don’t be nervous! This is a good thing – you’ll be a lot better off once we’re done.”

Hana swallowed and took a deep breath. “Okay. Open me up.”

Kitt pushed gingerly on Hana’s stomach, just above her belly button. At the same time she reached up and pressed the button beneath the skin on her neck. Hana gasped as she felt her flesh pull apart down her chest and stomach. Kitt unscrewed a couple of screws, then carefully opened the doors to reveal Hana’s inner workings.

“Hoo boy, this is some sophisticated rigging. And what’s this skin made of, anyway? Feels almost organic.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know that much about myself, honestly…”

“Well, you said you were made in the likeness of some human girl who died, right? Maybe they used her DNA to clone living flesh for you. …Or something. I don’t really know how humans work.” She reached up and touched Hana’s hair. “This feels organic, too. You’re definitely more than just omnic, I think.”

Hana combed her fingers through her hair. _Could I really be made up of parts of the original Hana Song? Her DNA, at least?_

“Hey, maybe you’re a Terminator! You know how they have the metal endoskeletons with the living…tissue…” At Hana’s blank stare she added, “You’ve never seen Terminator, have you.”

“Isn’t it like a hundred years old?”

Kitt laughed. “Okay, yeah, it’s old. I just have a thing for 1980s human media. I love the aesthetic of it all, and the robots were awesome. Ooh, what about Blade Runner? You must’ve seen that one, at least.”

Hana lifted her head and met her with a look of displeasure. “Can you just examine me?”

Kitt simulated a sigh. “ _Fine._ ” She stuck a hand inside Hana. Hana felt her press something inside – and then she felt nothing. “I turned off your touch receptors. Don’t worry, I’ll turn ‘em back on as soon as I’m done.”

The feeling was utterly bizarre – it felt as though she had been removed from her body. “This feels really weird.”

“I know, hon. But it’ll be all right.” Kitt rested her free hand on her hip. “Huh, here’s your problem – not only are your language discs not installed, but you’re missing most of ‘em.”

“What should I do? Can you buy them somewhere?”

“No, no, we’ve got spares here. I’ll install them for ya.”

“Oh, okay.”

Kitt disappeared into the main garage. Hana sat up slightly to watch her. A minute later she returned with a stack of small discs in hand. “Lucky for you we just picked some up.”

“Where do you get them from?”

Kitt leaned on the hydraulic press, and started inserting the discs one by one into Hana’s chest cavity. “Sometimes humans come to our neighborhood looking for a fight. Usually in a group, and usually armed. We try to salvage what we can.”

Hana looked down at the discs installing inside her. “So these are from a dead omnic?”

Kitt nodded. “I knew him. I built a kid for him.”

Hana’s mind was flooded with sudden knowledge as she gained dozens of languages in the span of a few minutes. At one point a disc installed that suddenly made the signs on the wall light up and start moving. “Whoa, what’s up with the signs?” She pointed to one of them, which her new language processing abilities told her said _Humans must be leashed at all times._

“You like that?” Kitt chuckled. “Made it myself. I don’t hate humans or anything…” She shrugged. “Don’t particularly _like_ ‘em, either…”

Hana remained silent. She had reason to hate both humans and omnics. Still, she tried her best to keep an open mind.

“So you can read Omnicode now,” Kitt said. “Can’t believe they cut you off from your own kind like that.”

“Well technically I wasn’t supposed to know I was an omnic.”

“What? Really?”

“Yeah. They filled my head with all these false memories and made me believe I was a human…I’m still having a hard time accepting that I’m not, to be honest.”

“Oh, Hana, I’m sorry. That’s terrible.”

Hana lolled her head back, staring up at the garage ceiling with its slowly-turning old metal fan. “I’m Hana 7. There were six before me, and at least one after me. The real Hana was Hana 1 I’m assuming. So there were five omnic Hanas before me who were decommissioned and destroyed. Technically I was decommissioned, too. This isn’t my body.”

Kitt looked up from Hana’s innards. “Whose body is it?”

Hana lifted an arm and fumbled around inside herself. Without the ability to feel she had no success. “Is there a little pink data core loose inside me?”

Kitt plucked something out. Sure enough, it was the core.

Hana took it gingerly from her. “This is my little sister, Hana 8. I was put in her body because mine was destroyed. I promised to keep her safe until I could find a body for her again.”

“You’ve got a spare personality core??” Kitt gestured to the far corner of the room. Hana noticed there were some discarded omnic chassis parts resting against the wall. “I’ve been wanting to put these parts to use, but I was fresh out of cores.” The lights on her forehead brightened. “If your sister needs a body I’d be happy to make one for her!”

Hana looked her over uncertainly. “Why do you want to help me so much?”

“Are you kidding? Like I said, you’re helping me! This is the kind of stuff I _love_ to do!” She closed up Hana’s chest. “Everything else on the inside seems to be working perfectly. Now let’s give you that makeover!”

She all but pulled Hana to her feet. “Uh, can I get redressed first?”

“Oh. Right.”

Hana pulled her bodysuit back on. “I’m gonna keep getting recognized in this outfit…”

“So you’re on the run or something?” Kitt dragged what appeared to be an old barbershop chair over to a greasy mirror mounted to the wall.

“I guess so. I was kind of just lying dormant in MEKA’s archive room until Sombra somehow got a hold of me and–”

“Sombra?!” Kitt whipped around, giving Hana just enough time to zip her suit up the rest of the way. “You know Sombra??”

“Uh, sort of? She’s just the person who happened to steal me and my sister from MEKA and reactivate me.”

Kitt folded her arms. “Well! Anybody Sombra deems worthy of her time has to be good stock. She’s been helping this place out for years!”

“Really?”

Kitt nodded. “She’s kind of a local heroine around here. One of the only good humans I’ve ever met.”

“…Huh.”

Before Hana could meditate further on that information Kitt dragged her over to the barbershop chair and sat her down. “So what’re we thinking for aesthetic mods? You want some racing stripes? Ooh, how about a pair of antennae? They’re the big thing these days.”

“I just want to get cleaned up, not changed into something else.” Hana tried not to look at herself in the mirror, but largely failed. If she really _was_ part Hana Song, did she even have any right to butcher her likeness in the first place? _I’ll just stay the way I am._

“Okay, I can work with that. I guess first thing we should probably buff out those scratches.”

With that she had Hana lying back down on the hydraulic press, this time on her stomach atop a thin, ratty blanket. Kitt picked up one of Hana’s hands first. “I’m assuming this is your first time getting repaired?”

Hana nodded.

“Okay then. I’ll go gentle.”

She grabbed a tool from a nearby bench, a large yellow thing with a round, coarse brush on one end of it. She gingerly rested it on Hana’s arm. “This might feel a little weird. But afterwards you’ll be looking good as new.”

The buffer started to _whirr_ and spin against Hana’s flesh. Hana tensed, but quickly realized that it did not feel painful. It kind of felt like scratching a nice itch. She rested her chin in the crook of her other arm and let Kitt work.

“So what happened to you anyway?” Kitt asked over the growl of the buffer.

“Colossal omnic.”

“Huh. So the two of you aren’t just acting?”

“Acting? Why would we be acting?”

“I don’t know, I guess from what the kids told me it seemed like the two of you were like one of those over-the-top action shows. Like, uh, I don’t know. Power Rangers or something.”

Hana blinked. Were there really people out there who thought her life-or-death battles were staged? “…No. It’s completely real. Some of my fellow pilots have died fighting the colossal omnic.”

“Oh. I had no idea.”

She slid the buffer gently up Hana’s arm, focusing on a few spots with some deep scratches. The areas she worked on looked flawless afterward. It was nice, but it also gave Hana a weird, twisting feeling in her gut. It was too perfect, almost uncanny. _I’m not human._ It kept hitting her in waves of revelation. _I never was._

She wondered what the real Hana was like. Presumably cocky and chipper, as they had programmed her to be, but what else? How had her life growing up in the shadow of the omnic crisis, in a city that could never fully rebuild from it, shaped her? _I wish I could have met her. But I guess I wouldn’t exist if I could._

“These are coming right out,” Kitt noted. “You must be made of some real good stuff.”

Hana stared straight ahead. “Yeah. I must be.”

After her scratches were buffed out Kitt then offered Hana some other options. “I’ve got a nice wax finish here that’ll make you nice and shiny!”

“Hm. I think I’ll pass on that.”

“What about a rain repellent? It’ll keep you dry and prevent rusting.”

“I’ve never had a problem with rusting. I’ve probably already been treated with something like that.”

“Fine, fine. The only other thing is that your alignment looks a little off. I’ll straighten it out for ya.”

“My...alignment?”

Kitt sat her up. “Hold still.” Hana complied, and Kitt pushed one metal elbow into Hana’s back. She took one of Hana’s arms as well, and wrenched it until something inside clicked. “There we go.”

Hana stood up and stretched a bit. Sure enough, she felt surprisingly better. “Huh. I guess I _was_ off.”

“Happens all the time.”

Hana turned to her. “Thank you.”

“Eh, it was nothing. Wish we coulda done some serious modding, but…”

“Well, maybe you can make something cool for Hana 8.” Hana held out her little sister’s personality core. “I mean, if you still wanted to.”

Kitt stared down at the tiny pink core for a moment. “…I don’t want to separate you two. How about this – I’ll get started on building a chassis for her, and when it’s done then you can bring her back here? And you can tell me if you think it’ll be good for her or not.”

“Okay. That sounds good!”

The lights on Kitt’s forehead brightened. “All right! It’ll take me some time to get all the parts together and make ‘em actually work. Might be a few weeks or so?”

“That’s fine by me. I’m not sure what Sombra wants from me, but hopefully I’ll be sticking around. Anything’s better than the archival room…”

“Of course. So yeah, I’ll get working on this right away, and I’ll let you or Sombra know when it’s done the next time I see one of you.”

“Okay. Thanks again.”

Kitt held out a hand. Hana took hold of Kitt’s bare metal fingers with her own of synthetic flesh, and they shook.

“You seem like a real good kid, Hana 7. If you ever need anything, you know where I’ll be.”

Hana smiled. “Thanks, Kitt. I’ll see you around.”

With that she picked up the device Sombra had given her, the “translocator”, and looked down at it for a moment.

_I don’t have to go back to her. I could go anywhere I want._

_She did save me, though. And these omnics say she’s a good person._

She didn’t allow herself to hesitate any longer. With the push of the translocator’s button she was gone from the body shop in an instant, returning to the human who freed her.


	3. The Clutches of Talon

Sombra was allied with an organization called Talon. Hana had heard of it, though all of what she’d heard was negative. They were classified as terrorists throughout most of the world.

She never would have dreamed she’d someday be working with a terrorist group.

“Most of us don’t stick around Talon HQ too much,” Sombra explained as she led Hana down the hallway of a building that could easily be any sort of corporate office. “We come from all over the world. But there’ll be a bunch of people today, because they want to meet you.”

“So you guys don’t all operate out of the same place?”

“Nah. We’re a pretty loose alliance, honestly. We all have our own goals and we combine our resources to help each other reach them.”

“…I thought terrorists just, like, blew things up and killed people.”

“Oh, some of us do.” Sombra’s attention was caught by someone breezing by them. “Ayy, Widow! I didn’t think you’d bother showing up today.”

A tall, imposing woman with pale, blue-tinged skin and long dark blue hair paused a few steps from them. Her golden eyes swept over Hana. She did not respond to Sombra but instead said, “Hana Song, right?”

“That’s me.” Hana tried to stand up as straight and tall as possible, though the woman seemed anything but intimidated by the presence of a military omnic.

The woman studied her for a long few moments. “Were you brought here against your will?”

“Um, not really? I mean, I guess it was this or go back to being deactivated...”

The woman’s eyes appeared empty, soulless. The omnics from the body shop had had more life in their artificial eyes than this woman possessed in hers.

“I see,” was all she said.

Hana 7 was programmed for cordiality even in the face of brash, unlikeable people. That was probably how she’d amassed so many admirers in her short time as D.Va. “So what’s your name?” she asked, attempting to sound chipper.

“They call me Widowmaker.”

_Geez, nice name._

She held a hand out to the woman. “Well, it’s nice to meet you. If you don’t mind me saying so, your eyes are really pretty! I’ve never seen someone with gold eyes before.” The unspoken comment hung in the air – _Never seen someone with blue skin before, either_ – but Hana simply smiled, hoping the woman wouldn’t think she was being cruel.

“…Thank you,” Widowmaker replied. For the briefest moment her icy stare seemed to defrost just the slightest bit. She glanced down at her own, deathly blue hand, then lifted it. They clasped hands and awkwardly shook. Hana took immediate notice of how unpleasantly cold she was. Not only did she look like death, she felt like it, too.

The moment their hands detached the woman quickly departed, saying nothing more.

Sombra chuckled to herself as they walked on. Hana frowned over at her. “What?”

“Sucking up to Widowmaker won’t get you anywhere. She doesn’t feel anything.”

“What do you mean?”

“Exactly what it sounds like. Widowmaker is an entity devoid of emotions.”

Hana scoffed. “That’s impossible. All living creatures feel emotions. Even omnics do.” And the look in the woman’s eyes when Hana showed her a little decency directly contradicted Sombra’s claim. Maybe it was just Hana’s superhuman powers of detection, but…

“Listen, Hana.” Sombra rested her hands in her pockets and settled into a pace beside Hana rather than in front of her. “You’re easy to read. Don’t go barking up that tree. She’s a lost cause. …We all are.”

At the end of the hall Sombra pushed open a set of doors. They led into a board room of some sort. A wooden table sat in the middle of the darkness, surrounded by a number of seats. All were empty at the moment.

“This is where you’re gonna get introduced to everyone. Well, everyone who matters, anyway.” She fanned an arm out. “Take a seat anywhere.”

“I’m meeting them now?”

“Well I mean you could probably reschedule if you’re not comfortable. I’m sure every big wig at Talon would be willing to rewrite their schedules around you.”

“Oh, piss off. You know that’s not what I was implying.”

Sombra flopped down into a chair and put her feet up on the table. Touching something by her ear, she said, “Okay, she’s here.”

Hana hesitantly took a seat beside her only remaining ally. Wishing she had a comb, she ran her fingers through her tousled hair a few times, and then double-checked herself for any particularly unsightly scratches. Sombra got a snicker out of that.

“Trust me, no one here is gonna care about your appearance.”

“Well _I_ care about it.”

“You’re such a weird thing. Who programs a robot to be self-conscious?”

A short time later the doors swung open again. In walked a group of five extremely diverse and odd-looking beings. Immediately Hana locked on to one of them – an omnic in a suit. His eyes were solid red, and he was modded in such a way as to give the appearance of short black hair and a goatee.

Likewise, he was the first to approach Hana. Extending a hand he said, “Maximilien. It’s a _pleasure_ to meet you, Miss Song.”

Hana shook his hand. “Thanks. Nice to meet you, too.”

The second person to approach her was a woman. She, too, was dressed in formal attire. Her short, bright red hair was gelled back, exposing the entirety of her face – and what a face it was. Two differently-colored eyes fixed on Hana, one of which was surrounded by a metal plate installed directly into the woman’s flesh – and the metal was hardly the sharpest of her severe features.

“What a fascinating creature you are.” She shook Hana’s hand as well, and as she did Hana noticed that in addition to disturbingly-long claws, one of her hands had the same dead blue tint as Widowmaker. “I’ve never seen anything like you before. Does your flesh have organic components?”

Hana was about to answer, but Sombra silenced her with a raised hand. “No creepy questions, Moira. Let Hana get settled in here.”

The woman seemed disappointed, but she relented, instead taking a seat opposite Hana. Hana could feel the woman’s stare on her lingering. She did her best to ignore it.

“ _Don’t tell these people anything you don’t have to,_ ” Sombra whispered in Spanish. Hana felt her Spanish disc fire up, loading the new language onto her tongue.

“ _Do you not trust them?_ ” The experience of speaking a brand new language had a feeling attached to it, like little sparks on her tongue. It was an interesting sensation, to say the least.

“ _I don’t trust anyone,_ ” Sombra replied simply.

Two of the Talon council members did not greet her at all. A man in a lab coat and a…someone…who was entirely covered by a cloak and skull mask. They simply took their seats.

The last member of the council to introduce himself was a man with a gigantic metal arm. “Nice to meet you, Hana.” He held the massive arm out to her. Hana reached uncertainly for it, but the man pulled away before she could attempt to shake it. With a raucous laugh he said, “I’m joking!”, and instead offered his other, normal-sized hand. With a nervous chuckle Hana shook that one. “My name is Akande.”

“Um, nice to meet you.”

Akande took the seat at the head of the table. As he sat down Hana realized there were no more vacant spots. “Where’s Widowmaker’s seat?” she asked.

“She’s not part of the inner council,” Sombra replied. “Hell, neither am I, but I’m the one who recruited you, so I have to sit through this boring meeting now.”

“So what’s Widowmaker’s role here?” The woman’s only question lingered in Hana’s mind. _Were you brought here against your will?_

“She is a mercenary,” Akande responded.

“Is that gonna be my role, too?”

“No. You will be much more useful as an infiltrator. I suspect that is why Sombra took interest in you.”

“I don’t even know if I want to work with you people,” Hana replied. “Convince me.”

Akande raised his eyebrows, then smiled. “Oh yes, I can definitely see why Sombra likes you.”

The others at the table kept silent, leading Hana to the assumption that Akande was the boss Sombra had spoken of.

“You see, Hana 7, we look for all manner of agents within our ranks. Different inputs, different life experiences. It helps keep us strong. Keeps us perpetually moving forward.”

“What’s Talon’s purpose? What are you trying to accomplish?”

“We all have differing end goals. But the greater picture, what we must all strive toward, is making humanity stronger. Preventing us from ever falling prey to our own creations again.”

“You need _omnics_ to help with that?”

“Humans and omnics are not two homogenous groups. Not all omnics feel and act the same. Many of your kind have chosen the side of humanity over the machines of war they are so often categorized with.”

“Countless omnics were killed by other omnics during the Crisis, and in uprisings afterward.” Maximilien spoke in a neutral tone, his blank eyes settled on Hana. “I feel no kinship with their killers.”

“You were built to protect the citizens of South Korea,” Akande continued, “correct?”

Hana nodded.

“And that is simultaneously the greatest threat to them.”

“Okay, I get that MEKA might be corrupt, but without them everyone would die.”

“And why is that?”

Hana raised an eyebrow. “Because the colossal omnic is like twenty stories tall and can crush a neighborhood with a single footstep?”

“All throughout time there have existed massive apex predators. Yet the earth was still populated by smaller, physically weaker creatures. Those creatures adapted and became stronger for it. They learned to survive. And when mass extinctions occurred it was not the largest who survived, but the most adaptable.”

Hana fell silent, processing that information. Nothing about it seemed factually incorrect.

“Your people have become complacent. They should be learning to defend themselves. Adapting to their hostile environment in order to grow stronger from it. But instead they place their lives in the hands of a designated few, under the assumption that you will always protect them. How quickly they forget what happened during the Crisis, when the omnics they built to serve humanity turned and nearly exterminated it.”

Hana struck her palms on the table. “I would _never_ hurt the people of Korea.”

“Have you heard of God A.I.?” His tone remained calm, diffusing some of Hana’s outrage. Reluctantly she slid back down into her seat.

“…I’ve heard of them, yeah.”

“Programs with the power to bend lesser omnics to their will. Perhaps _you_ would not hurt your people, but they could – and through you, they would.”

That thought had yet to cross Hana’s mind. _I can be hacked. I can be taken advantage of by hostile outside programs._

“MEKA is simply delaying the inevitable,” Akande continued. “The colossal omnic will eventually surpass them, and it will wipe out the rest of your country unless its people learn to rise up and fight back on their own.”

“So you want to eliminate MEKA completely…”

“Not necessarily. But at the very least it needs a complete overhaul.”

Her mind buzzed with information as she tried to quickly process it all. A quick look over at Sombra revealed the other woman yawning and stretching. It seemed she couldn’t care less about matters of mass extinction and evolution.

“So you guys are trying to make humanity stronger,” she murmured. It seemed like such a strange goal for a terrorist group.

“We are putting humanity’s feet to the fire.” Akande swept his organic arm out in a grandiose gesture. “Look at the world around us. So many creatures evolved and specialized to survive. This can only happen when they are continuously pressured to stay ahead. To stay alive. This is the only reason why all life on earth was not wiped out during those mass extinctions of history.”

Hana tilted her head. “Okay…so you think the people of my country would be better off without any defenses because it’ll force them to evolve.”

“Well, in the short term it would be considered adaptation, but yes, eventually it will push humanity to the next level. Under such duress your country may even produce the next incarnation of humankind.”

It was a lot to digest. These strange people with their strange ideals were now her only allies, leaving her with little choice but to go along. And odd as it was, Akande’s philosophy made some degree of sense. It was a cold and clinical outlook, but Hana herself was the result of a cold and clinical outlook, giving life to endless identical robots programmed to think they were a dead human girl. It seemed the world was a harsh place. Maybe a harsh viewpoint suited it.

“So what do you want me to do, exactly?” she asked.

Akande knitted his fingers together. “As I said, you will serve as an infiltrator. We’ll arrange for transportation to deliver you back to Busan, and you will re-enter MEKA and observe what you can.”

“So I’ll be their D.Va again? What if they’ve already activated a new one?”

“You will replace her. Sombra, surely you have something that can temporarily shut an omnic down without killing it.”

“Yeah, I can probably scrounge up something.”

Hana kept her eyes low. “You really think this is what’s best for the people of South Korea?”

“There will _be_ no South Korea if her people do not rise to the colossal omnic’s challenge.”

“…Okay. I’ll do what I can.”

“Good to hear. Remember, Hana”–Akande laid a palm on the table, soft but commanding–“this is for the good of your own people. If you want them to survive you _must_ let them become strong on their own. Weakness and complacency is what killed the original Hana Song.”

Hana clenched her fists beneath the table. _It’s true. If she’d been taught how to survive instead of putting her safety in MEKA’s hands, she might still be alive today…_

“When do I leave?”

At that, Akande smiled. “Whenever you are ready, Miss Song.”

Hana looked to Sombra. “What do you think?”

“Little old me? Having opinions?” Sombra twirled a long bit of her hair around a clawed finger. “You know I would _never_ disagree with Talon’s ideals.”

_She did say she wants MEKA shut down. So I guess she agrees._

“I’ll leave as soon as I can,” Hana said. “Will I be alone?”

“Physically yes, but we always remain in contact with our operatives. Most of us wear earpieces, but for you we can install something internally that will help ensure you don’t get caught.”

“What happens if I get caught?”

“If there’s anything left of you Talon will attempt to salvage it.”

Hana bit her lip.

“I’ll still have the backup copies of your personality core, but no body to put it in.” Sombra examined the claws of her gloves. “I guess I could have our friend back in Dorado pull something together out of scrap. You won’t be the fancy omnic-organic hybrid you are now, though. So I’d treasure this body while you’ve got it.”

Hana leaned her elbows on the table, and as she did so she felt the tiny orb of Hana 8’s essence settle inside her. _I wonder if MEKA still has the cores for Hanas 2-6. They deserve to be free, too._

“What’ll happen to the other Hanas if MEKA shuts down?” she asked.

“I don’t see that we couldn’t find a use for them,” Akande said. “They would be welcomed here.”

“ _I_ could certainly find a use for them,” the red-haired woman added. A tiny smile revealed that her canine teeth were sharpened into fangs.

“Okay, you’ve already hit your daily quota of creepy statements, Moira.” Sombra rested a hand on Hana’s shoulder. Hana couldn’t help but get the feeling Sombra’s chasing this Moira woman away from her was more about spiting Moira than about actually allying herself with Hana. _Sombra says don’t trust anyone. If she wants me to think that way then she can’t blame me for not trusting her, either._

Her hand settled lightly over her chest. _I have to do what’s right for me, my sisters, and my country. If that means aligning myself with questionable people…_

She looked around at the Talon Council, with their curious and intense eyes.

“All right,” she murmured, “then I guess D.Va is a Talon operative now.”

“Yaaaay!” Sombra threw her hands up in mock celebration, then gave a few sarcastic claps.

Hana sank her cheeks into her palms. “Never thought my life would end up on this kind of path…”

“It’s for the best,” Akande said.

“Trust me, you’ll actually be appreciated here.” Moira smiled that devilish smile again.

Her eyes on the floor, Hana nodded numbly.

* * *

 

_Later that evening…_

Hana knocked lightly on the door. It was identical to all the other doors in the hallway, but she had seen who passed through this one.

Several seconds after she knocked the door slid open. Looming in the doorway before her was Widowmaker, dressed in a simple white satin nightgown. Without any makeup and in such vulnerable attire Hana realized just how unwell the woman looked. Her eyes were sunken in and had dark, hollow rings sagging beneath them, and Hana noticed as Widowmaker took a sip of water from a glass she was holding that her fingernails were thin and splitting at the cuticles.

“What?” was the way she chose to greet Hana.

“We didn’t get to talk much earlier,” Hana said. “I thought maybe I’d get to know you a little, since we’ll be working together and all.”

Widowmaker’s eyes slid judgmentally down Hana’s form. “What a nosy little robot you are.”

“I’m not nosy. I’m trying to be friendly.”

“Why did they bother giving an omnic emotions? Seems like a waste of time.”

“Well I’m glad to have them. Emotions are what make life worth living.”

Widowmaker turned and sauntered back into the room. Hana followed her inside, closing the door behind them.

The room was simple, clearly only meant for brief stays. The walls were white, the bedspread was white, and the floor was a simplistic black rug. It felt like a cross between a hotel and a hospital room.

Widowmaker set her glass on a small wooden nightstand, which Hana noticed had a book splayed open on top of it, though its title was obscured from her sight. She then sat down on the bed. Hana took a seat at a barren cherrywood desk against the far wall, and turned the chair so as to be facing the other woman.

“You know what you feel isn’t real, right?” Widowmaker examined her with an unflinching stare. “You are a machine.”

The bluntness of her statement stung. “Why are you being so mean to me? I’m trying to make friends here.”

“A foolish mistake.” Widow crossed her arms idly and looked to the window, where the curtain was drawn tight. “One of several you have already made.”

“What were my other mistakes?” Hana tried to temper her voice, but it was impossible to fully remove the indignation from her inflection.

The woman seemed ready for that question. “Trusting Sombra. Coming here. Allowing strangers to tamper with your body. And these are just the things I know about your situation.”

“Okay, well it’s not like I had much of a choice in any of that. If I wasn’t here I’d be asleep in MEKA’s archival room for the rest of eternity, or until my core corrupted. And Hana 8–”

She stopped, but Widowmaker was now looking directly at her again. “…Do you know about Hana 8?” she added.

“No. I know only the barest details about you.”

“Oh. Well I–”

“Is it wise to tell a stranger all of your business?”

“Who are you gonna tell? Talon already knows, and you don’t exactly seem like a social butterfly.”

Widowmaker raised an eyebrow. Hana internally chastised herself for her rashness – but then, to her surprise, Widow actually smirked.

“So the naïve little robot _does_ have a bit of a bite to her. That will serve you well here.”

“You seem like you hate this place.” Hana’s eyes followed her as Widowmaker pulled her legs up onto the bed and sat back against the headboard, folding one leg over the other. They were the same unnatural shade as the rest of her, and dark, spidery veins ran like tangled wires down her thighs and calves. “Why do you stay?”

Widowmaker ran a hand down one leg, her fingertips tracing one of the larger exposed veins.

“I was born here,” she said.

“What? Really?”

Widow nodded. “Talon created me to be a mercenary for their cause. It is the sole reason for my existence.”

“Wow. Is that…” Hana hesitated, but decided to ask anyway. “…Is that why you look so different from any other human I’ve seen?”

Widowmaker must have picked up on her hesitation, for she said, “You don’t have to worry about offending me, omnic. To take offense is to feel hurt, and I feel nothing.” She leaned back, still fixing on Hana’s face. “Why don’t tell me your story, if you are so comfortable divulging personal information?”

“Okay. I will.”

Widowmaker drew in one knee and rested an elbow upon it. “So you are an omnic wearing the face of a dead human girl.”

“Yeah…there’s a whole line of us. This isn’t my body, actually. But Hana 8 is still inside of me. I’m looking out for her.”

Widowmaker lifted her head to search Hana’s face. “…I see.”

“She took a lot of damage and she was vulnerable, so I guess I took over for her. She’s not really a whole person anymore. Just a core. I’m doing what I can to keep us both safe.”

“Ah.” Widow paused, as if debating saying something else. Then, in a tone even flatter than her norm, she said, “We are in similar roles.”

Hana tilted her head. “You’re protecting someone whose body you took over?”

Widow waved her off. “Forget it. My tale is of no concern to you.”

“But now I want to know.”

“ _Putain_ , you really are Sombra’s protégé, aren’t you?”

Hearing the French word, Hana decided to flex her yet-unused French language drive.

“ _Je ne suis pas le protégé de Sombra,_ ” she replied in French. “ _Je ne suis loyal envers personne._ ”

A slight look of surprise crossed Widow’s face. “Oh? _Parlez-vous Français?_ ”

Hana couldn’t resist letting a small, prideful grin cross her face. “ _Oui._ ”

Widowmaker turned away from her then. “You do not belong here.”

“Huh? Why not?”

Suddenly Widow lunged at her. From somewhere she pulled a pistol, elaborately carved of silver, and pressed its cold muzzle to Hana’s forehead.

Hana balked. “Wh-what are you–?!”

After a few long seconds of terrifying Hana Widowmaker lowered the pistol. “I could have killed you right now. You and ‘Hana 8’ both.”

“B-but that wouldn’t make any sense. Why would you kill me?”

“I am a weapon. Weapons are made only to kill.”

“Well, I was only made to be a military mascot, but now I’m doing my own thing.” Hana tried and failed to mask the quiver in her voice. Her eyes were still on the other woman’s gun.

“Not all of us have that luxury.” Discarding the pistol, Widow sank back down onto the bed. Hana noticed her skin was slicked with sweat and she was breathing a bit heavier than before, as though springing at Hana had taken everything out of her. One hand settled over her chest as she attempted to recover.

“You don’t have to live like that,” Hana pressed. “You could come with me when I leave for South Korea. You could get away from all of–”

“Stop.” Widow twisted the fabric of her nightgown in one clenched fist. “Just leave.”

“But I’m serious, you really could–”

“You are hurting her.”

By then both of Widowmaker’s trembling hands were balled into fists, and for the first time Hana could clearly read genuine emotion on the woman’s face – gritted teeth, a wrinkled nose, narrowed eyes. She looked at Hana with clear anger.

Although Hana took a step back, her curiosity core was running at an all-time high. “Who?”

Widowmaker clambered off the bed. Hana backed up further, but the woman pursued her. Abruptly she threw an arm out and seized Hana by the wrist, dragging her in close. In that moment Hana got a glimpse deep into Widowmaker’s fierce eyes. There was anger, yes – but beneath that superficial tough exterior she caught sight of something else. Years upon years of exhaustion, of pain, of deep-set sorrow, crushed in like a permanent stain on her otherwise-flawless golden cat’s eyes.

“The person you’re protecting _is_ inside you too,” Hana whispered, a revelation to herself as much as a statement to the other woman.

Widowmaker twisted Hana’s arm behind her back. With no real way to resist Hana allowed the woman to push her out the door, so forceful she landed against the far wall. The door then slammed behind her.

More confused now than before she’d initiated their encounter, Hana stared at the closed door for a long minute before eventually giving up and heading back to her temporary bedroom.

* * *

 

“I told you not to bark up that tree. Did I not tell you that? Was that not the _exact_ phrase I used?”

“I thought maybe I was getting through to her. She seems so unhappy.”

“There’s no getting through. Widowmaker is totally closed off to everyone but the one person she’s protecting.”

Hana tilted her head, allowing Sombra to slip a long, thin metal device into her ear. It tickled, but she couldn’t laugh. Her thoughts were a million light-years away.

“Who is she protecting?” Hana asked.

“You’re just gonna keep coming up with questions until somebody kills you, huh?”

“I don’t ask that many questions.”

“You asked 17 questions in a 20-minute meeting.”

“What? You were counting?”

“I read the transcript after.”

“Who was transcribing–” She cut herself off, realizing she was doing nothing but asking questions. Sombra smirked and raised her eyebrows pointedly.

“Well geez, I’m sorry I was built to be interested in humanity instead of wanting to annihilate it.”

“Okay, fair point.” Sombra slid the metal inserter back out of Hana’s head. “I’ll tell you a little bit about her, but first let’s test this communicator.” She touched the earpiece in her own ear. “TESTING!”

“Ow!” Hana clutched her ears. “Lower the volume!”

“So you heard me?”

“I think you just blew my eardrums out.”

Sombra mouthed something. It took Hana a fearful second to realize she hadn’t actually gone deaf. “Stop, I thought you actually blew my hearing out for a second.”

With a grin Sombra slapped her on the arm. Then, pulling the nightstand drawer open, she fished out another device. “So before you leave can I tinker with you a little? I brought some stuff I borrowed from our friend at the body shop.”

“Kitt?”

“Yeah. You two hit it off?”

“Yeah, she was nice.”

“I’ve known her for years. She’s cool.” She held out a small, drill-like tool. “So can I try something? I’ve got a couple of little gadgets I’ve been wanting to test.”

“Uh…” Hana eyed the tool. “What exactly are they supposed to do?”

“It’s a surprise.”

“Then no.”

Sombra frowned. “Okay, fine. I wanted to give you some cool upgrades. Sensors and stuff. I’d like to give you some weapons, but that might be a little extra.”

“You’re gonna do all that with this tiny little tool?”

“Oh, I’ve got a whole duffel bag of stuff in the closet. I at least want to give you a video communicator, too. That way we’ll be able to see each other and you can show me what you’re seeing once you get into MEKA. Oh, and if I could install an AR HUD in your optical sensors that would be really useful for silently transmitting data like maps and stuff.”

 _This seems like a bad idea._ Widowmaker had said that trusting Sombra was a mistake. But then again Widowmaker herself had pulled a gun on Hana. Could she really trust the word of _anyone_ here?

“Hey, if it’ll make you feel better I can call Kitt and have her supervise.” Sombra grabbed her laptop off her bed and opened it up. “I could video call her right now.”

Hana mulled it over. “Sombra…”

Sombra looked up from her screen. “What?”

“One more question.”

“Sure, go for it.”

Hana studied her. At first Sombra wore her usual unreadable smirk, but as Hana searched her face the smirk began to dissolve a little.

“How do I know I can trust you?”

Sombra nodded to herself, as though anticipating just such a question. “I mean...” She shrugged. “You don’t. I’m not gonna try to convince you I’m a trustworthy person. I’m not. But I will tell you this – I sought you out for a reason, Hana 7. And it wasn’t just to bring you to Talon.”

Hana opened her mouth to ask another question, but remembered her own words and fell silent. Sombra snickered.

“You’re dying to ask me why I went after you, aren’t you?”

Hana folded her arms over her chest. “No.”

Sombra’s smirk blossomed into a grin. “You don’t see it? I like you! You’re a lot like me. I’m not the kind of person who can really maintain traditional friendships, so when I want some company I gotta go about it in a different way.”

“So there’s no ulterior motive there.”

“That’s a question.”

“No, I didn’t say it with a questioning inflection. It’s a statement.”

Sombra cracked up at that. “Okay, fair enough. I’ll give you that one.” She circled around Hana, looking her over. “It’s just kind of the latest thing to have an omnic friend, you know? Someone I’ve been trying to deal with has one, and they’ve been very useful to her. So I thought to myself”–she shrugged, flashing that devilish little smile of hers–“‘Hey, I gotta get me one of those!’”

Hana folded her arms. “Don’t know why I asked. Or stated.”

“But hey, it all worked out.” Sombra latched on to her arm. “So come on, let’s install some cool stuff in you and see what happens!”

Hana sighed. _Guess I have nothing to lose at this point…_

She sat herself down on the bed and reluctantly allowed Sombra to set to work on her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I'm extremely busy in my day-to-day life now I'm putting this fic on hiatus. I'd like to come back to it at some point, but at the moment my job and other factors just aren't allowing me the time to put in the effort that a complex story like this one requires.


	4. Machine, and Nothing More

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't forget about this fic!! It got put on a backburner since I'm working so much these days and had more ideas for other stories, but I've been working on this one in the background for a long time now, and I'm still very passionate about this story! I hope you enjoy this update, and shout-out to the readers who've stuck with me over the...[cringes] six months...since this fic has been updated, lmao...

**_위치_ ****_:_** ** _부산_** ** _,_** ** _한국_ **  

A beeping in Hana’s head stirred her awake. A notification flashed before her eyes, alerting her that Talon’s jet had touched down in Busan.  _This must be_ _part of the AR Sombra installed_ _._   

The jet was auto-piloted, leaving her with no one to ask or communicate with.  _Wait a minute._  She reached up just behind her left ear and touched the spot Sombra had worked on. “Sombra? Are you there?” 

A bit of static greeted her initially – then she heard Sombra groan and mutter something. It sounded like the woman was directly inside Hana’s ear, which weirded her out a little bit.  

“ _Hey, just so you know South Korea is 15 hours ahead of where I am. It’s 3am here._ _”_  

“Oh. Sorry.” 

“ _So you made it?”_  

“I just landed. So I’m gonna try to infiltrate MEKA while pretty much everyone’s gone home for the night?” 

“ _I mean, I’d just try to go to your house?_ _If there’s a Hana 9 that’s where she’ll be. You’ve got the thing to deactivate her, right?_ ” 

Hana retrieved the tiny, round black device from her backpack. “You promised it won’t hurt her.” 

 _“It won’t. It’ll just_ _disrupt her circuits and_ _knock her out until you_ _detach it from her.”_  

“That seems so cruel.” 

 _“Well it’s that or have her call the cops on the weird home invader_ _clone_ _.”_  

Hana had no response for that. She pressed the button installed just beneath her flesh again, disconnecting her from Sombra.  

The plane landed well outside the city, away from the public eye. It stretched out a set of folding metal stairs. "Thanks," Hana said without thinking. To her surprise, the jet produced a series of beeps in response. It wasn't quite omnic language - it was a simple, rudimentary version.  _I guess the AI piloting_ _the plane_ _must have some basic language capability._  

She had never thought of inanimate machines having a language before. She supposed it only made sense, since they did communicate with one another. 

Her primary language disc switched to Omnicode. She had yet to practice speaking it – she had only read it. And yet it felt as though it came naturally to her as she chirped and whirred like an old computer. The plane's AI answered in kind.  

 **GOOD LUCK M** **ISS** **SONG.**  

"Thanks!" Despite it coming from a non-sentient AI, the encouragement helped spur Hana on a little more confidently.  _I wonder how many other machines I can talk to?_  A whole world of creatures she had never spoken to awaited her – who knew what interesting knowledge they held?  

The city of Busan lay just beyond the horizon, full of humans and machines alike. With nothing but herself and the core of Hana 8 inside her, Hana pushed on for her home city. 

* * *

 

Busan had not changed since she'd been deactivated. Her city, her country, hell, the entire world had simply moved on without her. It was still bustling, noisy, crowded, and beautiful in its own way. Full of a world of different types of people, all determined to call Busan home even in spite of the colossal omnic threat. And speaking of the colossal omnic, it had had its way with the city after taking down Hana 8 and, presumably, her fellow pilots. The damage wasn't as expansive as it had been in the past, leading Hana to deduce the omnic was stopped eventually, but there were leveled buildings and debris blocking streets, causing major traffic backups on the streets that weren't blocked.  _I wonder how many civilians died this time._   

She thought of the motivations of that man from Talon. Doomfist.  _He wants people to die._ How could someone feel that way? While it was true that the D.Va series was apparently programmed to value protecting people above all else, Hana could never imagine actively initiating incidents of mass casualty. How could anyone? 

Sombra's AR was hard at work pulling data and information about everything around her. It was more than a little overwhelming. Suddenly she knew every type of tree in the street corner gardens and every species of bird and bug in them. "Sombra," she whispered, her voice barely audible as she plunged into the throngs of people on the sidewalk, "is there any way to turn off some of this stuff?" 

 _"God, go to bed already,"_ Sombra grumbled.  _"You're defaulted to Full View. You can change the setting to Minimal View if you want."_  

"How do I do that?" 

The other woman did not respond. "Sombra?" 

 **CONNECTION ENDED** flashed across her vision.  _Did she fall asleep on me?_  

With no idea how to adjust her own settings Hana 7 reluctantly accepted the absolute deluge of knowledge.  _Cinnamomum_ _camphora_ _._ _Abeliophyllum_ _distichum._ _Abies_ _koreana_ _. Composite concrete, volume fraction 2.7%._ _Building c_ _onstructed 06/05/2068_. Thankfully it didn't seem Sombra had programmed in any information about the humans she passed – she wasn't sure she could take any more input.  

As she walked the familiar streets she was greeted by many a friend and fan. Despite her own emotional state she greeted them all warmly. After all, they were not the ones who had put her in this situation.  

She couldn't remember the last time she'd walked the streets unguarded like this. Although she could hardly consider herself endangered; Sombra had loaded her up with weapons. They weren't the advanced, evil-battling robot technology she'd expected though – one of them was a simple light pistol she'd stashed inside her chassis alongside Hana 8. 

Her family's apartment was unassuming. You'd never know a celebrity lived there. Although she hardly lived there anymore, since she'd spent most of the last few years on-base. 

Night was beginning to fall over the city by the time she reached her apartment – though with all the lights of the city you would hardly know it. It was as if the humans were trying to ward off the dark, huddled together in the false safety of their artificial lighting. She couldn’t blame them, since the greatest horror they had ever known lurked in the pitch-black depths of the sea. 

Hana paused outside the front door of the apartment complex, located right on the street. It was protected by a palm scanner, set to recognize the print pattern of its inhabitants. Of course it recognized Hana, and allowed her inside. 

It should have felt nostalgic. Instead Hana felt like an alien in her own home. 

She slipped inside quietly, hoping not to make a scene. Immediately she came into contact with a security guard, the only evidence that a world-famous celebrity lived within the complex. "Good afternoon, Cheol-Min," she said in Korean, nodding and smiling at the older man.  

"Hello, Miss Song! Always nice to see you." 

 _You wouldn't feel that way if you knew why I was here._  She focused her attention on simply getting into the elevator and reaching her family's apartment. 

Her family lived on the tenth floor. In the time it took her to get up there second thoughts began to flood her mind.  _All these people could die. That's what Talon wants. Everyone who can't become a warrior should just be killed off. What about old people? And people with disabilities? Do they all deserve to die? MEKA might not be perfect, but..._  

The elevator doors slid open on Floor 10. Hana attempted a casual stroll down the hallway, keeping an eye out for any signs of another Hana model.  _Sombra gave me the ability to see all_ _this stupid information – she couldn't give me x-ray vision or something?_  

Her family's apartment was at the end of the hall on the left. Thankfully their security wasn't a key lock, but a retinal scanner. Hana 7 of course had Hana Song's eyes, so she was inside in a matter of moments.  

It had been so long since she'd been home. Although she felt like an outsider in her own life, a part of her delighted in being back at the familiar setting. After everything she'd been through with MEKA and then Talon, she was more than happy to be in a place she knew was safe. A place she knew as home. 

The door to her bedroom was closed. Hana crept over to it, careful not to alert her parents if they were home. Her bedroom door, covered in stickers, photos and fanart drawn by adoring D.Va fans, held a nostalgic feel as well. She especially felt it with the oldest pictures, the ones from before she was a famous mech pilot. She reached out and touched one synthetic hand to the picture of herself – well, of Hana Song - as a child, clutching a gigantic golden trophy and showing her missing kiddie teeth in a huge grin. She could remember that day so vividly. It was difficult to believe they weren't her real memories. 

She gave a gentle knock on the door. There came no response, though as she leaned closer she could hear a familiar voice chattering away. Hana knocked again, more persistently. The voice stopped. 

Moments later the door opened, and Hana's knees nearly buckled under her. 

It was her. Her face, her own eyes stared back at her. Every detail was exactly the same. Despite knowing in her head that she was one of a series of identical girls, actually  _seeing_  one was enough to shake her to the core.  

Likewise, the other Hana's eyes went wide as she took in the sight of Hana 7. "Wha-what??" 

Before she could react Hana sprung at the replacement. The other Hana, what must have been Hana 9, attempted a scream, but Hana 7 covered her mouth before she could get it out. They hit the floor with a crash and rolled around, clawing and grabbing frantically at one another. Finally Hana 7 managed to grab the sonic disruptor Sombra had given her out of her pocket. With a grunt she stuck it to the back of Hana 9's neck. 

"Who are you??" Hana 9 scrambled backward as the disruptor began to hum. "Why do you look like-like-like-like-" Her cybernetic pupils dilated as her limbs began to go limp. "...System malfunction detected." They locked eyes for a brief moment, then Hana 9's gaze went distant and blank. She collapsed. Hana 7 caught her just before her head hit the floor. 

She wasn't sure if the sonic disruptor shut the girl down completely or simply stunned her. "Hana?" Hana 7 whispered as she stared down into her youngest sister's vacant optical sensors. "Can you still hear me?" 

Hana 9 did not physically react. But deep inside her workings Hana heard a distressed whirring.  _Oh, God._ Hana lifted her gently and hugged her to her chest. "I'm sorry. It's not like I really  _want_  to do this..." 

"D-d-d-d-disruption detected..." Hana 9's voice was distorted and weak, as if running on backup power. "Sending crash report." 

"Wait, no, don't do that!" The last thing she wanted was for MEKA to be made aware that Hana 9 had been shut down. In a panic, she did the only thing she could think of – she lifted Hana 9's t-shirt, pried her chest open, and tore out her core. Hana 9 sputtered, then went limp in Hana's arms. 

The core sparked in Hana's hand. Hana wrapped her fingers around it and held it until it stopped discharging energy. She then opened up her own chassis and rested Hana 9 in beside Hana 8.  _Neither of you deserve this. I'm sorry._  

As she knelt over Hana 9's lifeless body, she caught sight of something on the dual monitor display behind her. The left monitor displayed a paused stream, but the right had a website pulled up. It was an odd, ugly shade of light yellow, with a chain of pink boxes of images and text. Hana set Hana 9 down on their bed and moved over to the computer. 

The image thread started with a promotional picture of D.Va. Alongside it was a neon green text that read: 

_> crushed to the depths of East China Sea by multi-ton omnic monstrosity _

_> disappears for a few days _

_> comes back absolutely fine few days later, not a single scratch or bruise and seemingly unfazed by the whole thing _

_Hana Song is a waifu bait android build by Worst Korea to appease and distract their sheeple masses_

Hana stared at it in disbelief. The thread continued on with a few more posts. 

_'No shit. You really thought a girl who looks like she's right out a loli mecha anime just happens to be some incredible, unstoppable soldier? Out of fucking South Korea of all places?'_

The next post, accompanied by a grossly-detailed drawing of a man crying with laughter, simply said, 

_> he really thinks SK is wasting money building waifubots when they can't even fix their omnic shitting ground of a country _

Hana frowned.  _Who are these people? Why was Hana 9 reading this? Did she have suspicions about her origins?_  

She looked over at the poor, ignorant android, lying stiff in her bed like a corpse. Hana leaned down and gingerly closed her eyes, then tucked her in under her fluffy pink blanket. "When this is over we'll all be able to live our own lives. I hope." 

The whirring inside Hana 9 quieted just a little. Hana patted her hand, then turned her focus back to the rest of the apartment. She could hear a faint commotion in the kitchen. Her parents often cooked together. Hana 7 had memories of their food being delicious, though to her metal palate it had, of course, never tasted like anything. 

"Mom? Dad?" she called out in Korean. "Is, um, dinner ready yet?" 

Her father stepped out into the hall to greet her. "She emerges!" he declared with a teasing smile. 

"Heh, yep." She followed him into the kitchen, where her mother was keeping an eye on a boiling pot. Her chest clenched at the familiar sight. It had been so long since she'd been home... 

She took a seat at the small table in the corner of the kitchen. "I missed you," she said, hoping her smirk would carry the statement as a joke.  

Her father laughed. "We missed you too, Queen Bee. We have to watch your streams to see you these days!" 

Hana stared down at the table.  _Kalopanax_ _, from the tree_ _kalopanax_ _septemlobus_ _, common names castor aralia and tree aralia_.  _N_ _ative to northeastern Asia._  

"So how was it?" Her mother asked. "Did you win?" 

It took her a moment to realize she was talking about Hana 9’s Starcraft stream and not obscure species of Asian trees. "Oh...yeah. I did." 

"How dare you ask that?" Her father prodded her mother. "She’s  _our_  daughter - she’s the best!” 

 _So_ _this is how they cope with losing their daughter...they just pretend she’s still alive._  Although her simulated emotions predisposed her to a fondness for the two humans, ultimately she had no real connection to them. 

So why did it feel like she did? 

“Oh, I know.” Her mother smiled a weary smile. “She’s always Number One.” 

 _More like Number Seven._  She lowered her head, unable to look her parents in the eyes.  _This is a pathetic life for me and them._ _They deserve better than this, too._  

Her father came up beside her. “Everything okay, sweetie?” 

“Yeah.” She straightened up and attempted a smile, knowing that the Hanas after her were all supposed to be chipper little soulless drones. “I’m fine. I’m always fine.” 

It rang false even in her own ears. Frowning, her father sat down opposite her at the tiny table. “Are you sure?” 

“Yeah, Dad - c’mon, why are you acting so weird?” She forced an irreverent laugh and tossed her hair over her shoulder. That seemed to assuage him a bit, though she could still see the concern in his eyes when he looked at her. Or maybe it was something else. Maybe it was sadness. 

She noticed her mother wouldn’t look directly at her. She focused her attention solely on the pot on the stove.  

It was such an uncomfortable atmosphere. No wonder later Hanas had been programmed to be less self-aware. Knowing the truth of this family, two grieving parents in denial about the death of their daughter, treating a series of machines as her replacement, was indescribably depressing. 

None of them spoke much after that. Her dad rejoined her mother assisting with the cooking while Hana stared blankly down at the table. Her emotions were churning inside. This was so wrong. She had been in this exact position so many times before, but not in this way. Her memories were of an older time, a time she wasn’t around for, and yet they plagued her, penetrated every moment of her existence.  

“Hana, what’s wrong??” She heard her father’s voice, but could not see him – her face was buried in her hands. Her shoulders quivered, and if she were organic she would have been crying. Instead all she could do was shakily draw in air to try to cool her overworked insides. A tiny whimper escaped her as she did.  _I hate this...I feel like a ghost..._  

Two gentle hands settled on her shoulders, though he did not draw her in for a full hug. “Hana?” her father asked again, gingerly squeezing the synthetic flesh that lined her metal frame. “Are you feeling okay?” 

Her rational brain told her to lie, to desperately attempt to salvage the cover she’d already blown. But something inside her pushed her to a more impulsive decision. 

“Mr. And Mrs. Song,” she said, “I know I’m not your daughter.” 

Both parents halted everything they were doing. Her father drew back from her, and though she was turned she could feel him staring at her. Regardless, she did not look back. 

“Something’s wrong,” her mother whispered. “We need to contact MEKA.” 

“No!” Hana jumped up out of the chair. “Please, the last time I was in MEKA’s hands they tried to destroy me. I’m not trying to mess up your lives any more than they’ve already been messed up. I just want to understand everything.” 

The Songs exchanged a glance. Her father’s eyes then went back to her, softer than she’d expected. 

“You know about what happened?” her father asked. 

Hana nodded. “I’m an older Hana model that was taken from MEKA by a hacker named Sombra. I’m actually...” 

Her parents both came up close to her. “Hana 7??” they exclaimed. 

Confused, Hana nodded. 

Her father pulled her into an unexpected bear hug. Despite feeling so alien to the family, Hana melted into his arms. To her surprise, something damp began to leak out of her eyes. It gleamed, clearly synthetic, as it dribbled down her cheeks and onto her father’s shirt.  

“Hana 7...” Her father patted her back, lovingly, not like she was just a machine built to replicate their dead daughter. “You were the closest we ever came to having our real daughter back.” He drew back slightly, and she realized his eyes were wet too. In fact, just behind him her mother was watching them with tears in her eyes as well. “We actually believed that maybe our sweet girl was with us, through you...” 

“Huh?” Hana wiped the tears from her face. “What do you mean?” 

Her mother swept her up into a hug next, resting her chin on top of Hana’s hair as she pulled her in close. “You act so much like she did,” her mother said, her voice cracking mid-sentence. “You knew things we never told MEKA or Omnica. There was no explanation...” 

“I...I don’t understand.” Hana glanced between them, her brain chugging away to try to make the connection they were implying. “I’m not Hana. Hana was human.” 

“Yes, she was.” Her father reached out and wiped a gentle thumb across her cheek. As she’d thought, her tears were thick and sticky, not like normal human ones. Almost oil-like in consistency. “But she isn't any longer. It may seem silly to a creature of pure science, but we...we liked to believe she found a new home in you.” 

Hana could only stare at him. “Oh.” 

“When MEKA decided you were unstable, they forced us to give you up to them. They promised your replacement would be exactly the same...” 

“Hana 8,” Hana murmured. 

Her father nodded. ”And she was a nice girl. But she wasn’t  _you._ ” 

“Losing you was like losing Hana all over again,” her mother spoke up. Her gaze was distant. “Your absence carved open that same hole in our family again, and no other omnic could fill it.” She paused, and then said, “So we sought out a way to bring you back to us.” 

That drew her interest. “What do you mean by that?” 

“Some time after your deactivation,” she explained, “we were approached by an organization that told us they could bring you back. They didn’t seem the most trustworthy, but we were desperate.” 

“Wait.” Hana’s eyes went wide. “What was the organization’s name?” 

Her parents exchanged another look. 

“’Sombra Collective’,” her father said in English. 

Hana practically keeled over. “ _You two_  got Sombra involved??” 

“And they got you back!” 

“That’s...true, okay.” Sombra  _was_  the only reason she and Hana 8 were still alive. “So Sombra found out about me through you guys.” It made sense. Despite her frankly creepy amount of information access, Sombra couldn’t possibly know  _everything_  on her own. 

She looked into the sad and weathered faces of her parents. They had aged so much in just a few short years. Sombra had clearly preyed on them for her own benefit, but they did get some benefit too.  _They think I’m the actual Hana Song._ All those memories she had  _were_  kind of strange...but couldn’t those just have been programmed into her?  _I_ _t’s not possible_ _for me to be her_ _. Humans can’t be reborn into robots._  

“Thank you for saving my life,” she murmured. “Mom...Dad...” 

Her parents nodded, smiling now. “Of course,” her father said. “You know we’d do anything for you. You’re our little girl.” 

“Right.” She straightened her shoulders. Regardless of the emotional moment, she still had a mission to complete. “So would you...” 

They waited for her to finish. 

“Would you be willing to help me free the other Hanas from MEKA?” 

As expected, their eyebrows shot up, and they stared at her for several long seconds before responding. It was her father who first spoke up. “’Free’ them?” He spoke the words slowly, as if uncertain he had heard her correctly. 

Hana nodded. “They deserve to live their own lives too.” 

“But...they’re...” He looked to Hana’s mother. 

“They’re not alive,” her mother said. “Not like you.” 

“What? Yes they are.” Hana crossed her arms indignantly. “We’re all alive. We all have our own minds and hearts, even if we look identical.” 

“No, Hana, you don’t understand.” Her father’s tone was soft, but Hana’s hackles were raised regardless. “We’ve lived with them for years. You’re so different from them. They are like...simple machines. Like wind-up toys. They just do the same few things, say the same few things, act the same way no matter what is happening around them. They were built to defend Korea and keep its human population happy. That’s their only purpose.” 

“But that’s not fair. They didn’t choose that.” 

Her father looked as though he were about to argue, but he deflated as he looked into Hana’s eyes. 

“I forgot how much you really are just like her,” he murmured. “She would feel the same way...” 

“Even though it was an omnic that took her from us.” Her mother folded her arms, keeping her gaze off either of them. 

“The colossal omnic isn’t an ordinary omnic. It’s a war machine. We’re not the same.” 

“I know.” Her mother exhaled softly. “So how would we help you ‘free’ the other omnics from MEKA, anyway?” 

“I...don’t really know.” Hana rubbed her chin. “I’ve been thinking about sneaking them out a few at a time. They have hundreds of them there. I don’t think they’d notice until a lot of them were already gone. Maybe you guys could house them here in the meantime.” 

“You want us to house hundreds of refugee omnics? In our apartment?” Her father looked pointedly around the tiny room.  

“Well, Talon was interested in them, but I don’t really trust them.” 

“Talon? The – the terrorist organization?” 

“Yeah. They’re working with Sombra. Or Sombra’s working with them. Something like that.” 

Her father paled. “I didn’t know Sombra had links with terrorist groups.” 

“You’re not engaging in terrorist activities?” her mother asked, as visibly distraught by the thought as her father. 

“Um...” Hana shrugged sheepishly.  

Her father gasped. “Hana!” 

“Well you guys set me up with them! I didn’t have any choice!” 

“We didn’t know the Sombra Collective was associated with  _Talon!_ ” 

“Well It's too late now. I’m working with them, and they’re going to help me infiltrate MEKA and rescue the other Hanas.” 

“Hana, you can’t trust people like that,” her mother said. “They’re always in the news...they kill people! They just destroyed a bunch of peaceful omnics in Africa. What makes you think they’re really going to help you?” 

“I know they’re dangerous. But I'm already in mortal danger. MEKA will have me destroyed the second they find out about me. I might as well use my time to do something useful.” 

“They won’t destroy you. We’ll keep you here.” Her father’s voice took on a stern edge. This was no longer a discussion. 

“Dad...” 

His hand wrapped around her wrist. “Nobody’s taking you away again. You’re going to stay here and be safe with us. We’ll - we’ll...” After glancing desperately about the room, he reached over and locked the front door. 

Hana raised an eyebrow. “You know I can just unlock that, right?” 

Her mother, with the tiny, waifish frame Hana shared with her, moved to stand in front of the door.  

“Seriously?” Hana slipped easily out of her father’s gentle grasp and walked right around her mother over to the door.  

“No! Don’t go!” Her father grabbed her around the waist and yanked her back in toward him. He held her in place, burying his face in her hair. She realized he was breathing heavily, like he was close to crying again. “Don’t leave us again, Hana,” he whispered. “We just got you back...” 

No matter how stubborn she was, it was impossible to see her parents so torn up and feel nothing. Hana allowed herself to be held by her father, surrendering her attempt to reach the door. 

“...I guess I can stay for a few days,” she conceded. 

Her mother and father both hugged her tight. “We’ll do whatever we can for you,” her mother said. “If you really want us to help you with the other D.Va models then we will. Anything to keep you away from that awful Talon...” 

Her father nodded eagerly. “Just tell us what we can do to help. We’ll do it.” 

“Um, well...” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Hana 9 is unconscious in her room. Maybe we should start by helping  _her_.” 

* * *

 

After her initial disorientation upon waking, Hana 9 was surprisingly docile about 7’s presence. She went right back to streaming, as if nothing had happened. Her parents gave Hana 7 a pointed look as she stood behind Hana 9, watching her stream Starcraft without a care in the world. 

She had no idea what the other Hanas were like, but if they were all like this then they’d be little help freeing themselves from the single, rigid track their lives were set upon.  _They kind of are like wind-up toys._  

One hand settled idly over her chest as she thought about it. Was Hana 8 like that too? She then thought of the website Hana 9 had been on – she seemed to have at least  _some_  degree of awareness that something was strange about her situation. Unless she was just reading it for fun, which, considering how she acted, wasn’t too far out of the realm of possibility. 

Right on cue Hana 9 jumped in her seat, furiously clicking the mouse. “Heck yeah! No one’s beating  _my_  high score!” 

“Soo...” Hana 7 looked over at her parents. “Where should I sleep?” 

Unfortunately, she knew there was only one answer. She had a massive bed, all decorated and fluffed up with pink pillows and blankets like it belonged to a cartoon princess. Two people – or two omnics – could easily fit in it. 

And so, when it came time to rest for the night, she and Hana 9 both changed into the original Hana’s old pajamas and claimed opposite sides of the bed. Hana 7 tried to close her eyes and go into rest mode, but she could feel Hana 9’s stare boring into her back. When finally she turned over, she saw her sister’s softly-glowing eyes staring at her in the deep blue darkness. 

“I don’t really understand what’s going on,” Hana 9 whispered. 

“I know. It’s weird.” Hana glanced past her, over at their computer. “Why were you reading that website?” 

“Which one?” 

“The one that was talking about us being androids.” 

“Oh. That.” She attempted a chuckle. “I just like to see the crazy theories my fans come up with!” 

Hana shook her head. “You don’t have to lie to me, little sis. Did you have a feeling something was weird with you?” 

Hana 9 stared at her for a long while. Then she gave a tiny nod. 

“Aw, sis...” Hana shimmied over to her and pulled her into an uncertain hug. Hana 9 lay there limply, allowing herself to be hugged but otherwise not moving. “Well, I’m trying to set all the D.Va omnics free so we don’t have to live confused lives like this anymore.” 

“’All’ of them? How many are there?” 

“I don’t know. Hundreds, I think.” 

“Wow.” 

“Yeah.” 

“Are you the first one?” 9 looked her over with curious eyes. Clearly she, too, saw the difference in Hana 7.  

“No,” Hana said. “I’m number 7.” 

“Oh.” 9 was quiet for a long moment before then asking, “What number am I?” 

“Nine.” 

To that, 9 said nothing. They spent the next long while staring up at the ceiling together in silence. In the absolute quiet Hana could hear the faint whirring of both her and 9’s inner workings.  

“It feels like I’m waking up from a dream,” 9 said. 

“Well, you kind of are.” Hana folded her arms behind her head as she stared upward. “Do you wish you were still sleeping?” 

9 deliberated for a moment. “I don’t know,” she eventually said. “Maybe. I feel all wrong. Most of me just wants to ignore this and go back to doing the things I normally do.” 

“That’s understandable.”  

Hana 9 burrowed under the blankets. Hana felt her grab hold and hug her again. Hana held her, trying to ignore the weirdness inherent in the act of comforting your clone. Shouldn’t they be mortal enemies or something? Hana 9 had replaced Hana 7. She was the shiniest new model. In any sci-fi movie Hana 7 would resent her. 

In reality, she could only feel sympathy for her. 

“Doesn’t MEKA need us to protect Korea?” Hana 9 asked from partway under the blankets. “If you take all the Hanas from MEKA there won’t be a lot of soldiers left.” 

She had thought of that herself, but hadn’t expected Hana 9 to bring it up. “I know,” she said, trying to sound confident in her words. 

“We were built to fight for our country. To defend our people. I don’t mind it.”  

“Okay, but you should have the choice.” 

“Well now I do, right? I’d choose to keep fighting for Korea.” 

It hadn’t occurred to her that some of the D.Va models might want to stay with MEKA even knowing the truth about them. But were they really making that choice themselves? They were following their programming. How did one separate the will of an omnic’s creator from its own will? Was there a difference? 

Hana 9 popped out from under the blanket. “I mean, it’s actually kind of good, isn’t it? Better for replaceable robot soldiers to die than innocent human civilians. Then it’s more like a video game than a real war.” 

“I...guess?” Hana glanced down at her. “Do you really feel that way? Or are you just doing what you’re told?” 

Hana 9 stared up at her. “I don’t know. It’s how I feel.” 

Hana wasn’t sure how to respond to that. A few things crossed her mind, but she did not vocalize them. Instead she said “Let’s get some sleep. We can talk more in the morning.” 

“Okay. Goodnight, Hana 7.” 

“Goodnight, little sis.” 

* * *

 

“ _TIME TO WAKE UP!! TIME TO WAKE UP!!”_ Sombra’s voice screamed inside her head, accompanied by what sounded like a video of crashing cymbal sound effects. “ _IT’S 3AM!! TIME TO WAKE UP LIKE YOU WOKE UP SOMBRA LAST NIGHT!!”_  

Hana startled awake at the voice. She sat bolt upright in bed, her eyes searching the dark room before she remembered Sombra could contact her from a distance. Hana 9 was in a deep sleep state, so much so that she didn’t even notice Hana’s movement in the bed.  

“You jerk!” Hana whispered. “I didn’t  _mean_  to wake you up at 3am!” 

 _“Well hey, now you have the whole day ahead of you! You can watch the sun come up, hear the birds sing, and ponder your existence like every other angsty sci-fi android.”_  

“Don’t make me start a second omnic crisis.” 

Sombra’s laughter echoed in her head.  _“See, I told you that was a good threat. I mean, I couldn’t be any less intimidated by you personally, but you should definitely try it out on other people and see how they react._ _Just make sure they’re not armed first._ _”_  

Hana 9 was beginning to stir from Hana’s talking. Hana carefully slipped out of the bed and wandered out into the bathroom, where she shut herself inside. “So there’s a bit of a...hiccup here,” she whispered. 

 _“Oh no, you’ve gone soft, haven’t you? Next thing you’ll_ _be giving bleeding heart speeches in the middle of London and we’ll have to sic_ _Widowmaker_ _on you.”_  

“What? No.” Hana made a face. ”Hana 9  _wants_  to be a soldier. She says she’s okay with dying to protect the people of South Korea.” 

There was a brief pause on Sombra’s end before she said, _“That’s not too surprising. They probably ramped up the patriotism and loyalty in this one to keep up good public appearances after Hana 8 got wrecked.”_  

“So if she actually, genuinely  _wants_  to be a soldier, do I have any right to deny her that? I can’t say I’m doing this to free the other Hanas if I’m directly going against what they want.” 

 _“See, your problem is that you’re overthinking all this.”_ She heard a faint creak, as though Sombra were swiveling in a chair.  _“The bottom line isn’t what MEKA’s_ _omnic_ _soldier drones want or think they want. It’s about the fact that MEKA is pushing lies and wasting money Korea doesn’t have to keep Korean kids hero-worshipping the program and enlisting to be just like their_ _seemingly-immortal_ _heroine, Hana Song.”_  

“But it’s not like we’re creating wars where we don’t need to. We have a legitimate threat showing up on our shores to attack us at random intervals. The colossal omnic-” 

 _“Hey, Hana?”_  

Hana stopped. “What?” 

Normally Sombra just spoke without any consideration for the impact of her words. So when she paused for a significant amount of time before speaking, Hana swallowed and prepared herself for whatever the other woman was about to say. 

 _“Don’t you_ _think it's kind of strange that every_ _omnic_ _stopped attacking years ago, except that one?”_  

Hana wasn’t sure how to respond to that. It was a thought she’d had before, but never one she could satisfactorily answer. “I mean...” She leaned against the closed door, staring at her reflection in the mirror on the far wall. “It’s a remnant from the omnic crisis. No one’s been able to kill or stop it fully. So it just...never stopped.” 

 _“But why is it still hostile? All of the remaining_ _omnics_ _that were around during the_ _omnic_ _crisis have_   _mellowed out and aren’t in active combat mode anymore._ _So_ _what’s keeping this one so aggressive? What’s the reason for it to keep fighting?”_  

“...Maybe it’s being controlled by something? Like the God A.I. Akande mentioned?” 

 _“That’s what I’m trying to figure out._ _It_ _makes no sense for one single_   _omnic_ _to be waging its own_ _omnic_ _crisis for decades after the rest of the world moved on.”_  

“Maybe its wartime programming is just, like, stuck.” She recalled the noises it had made when she came close to it, the omnic language she was cut off from for most of her existence. It had seemed as though the omnic was trying to communicate with her. “Or maybe someone is forcing it to act.” 

 _“So._ _..controlling_ _it.”_  

“Oh, yeah. I guess that’s the same thing.” 

 _“I’m wondering if there’s a way we could get you down to its base of operations. It was just recently driven back underwater, so it’s definitely weak right now. If you could communicate with it_ _,_ _we could stand to gain a ton of valuable info.”_  

“You want me to chase it under the sea??”  

 _“Not alone.”_  

“You’d come with me?” 

 _“_ _Pfft_ _, yeah right. I was talking about your MEKA. The machine, not the organization. Why are they called the same thing, anyway? That’s confusing as shit.”_  

“My MEKA...?” It had been so long since Hana 7 had sat in the pilot seat of her beloved mech. Well, mech _s_...she was quite prone to getting them destroyed. “No way! MEKA will  _definitely_  notice if I steal a freaking mech!” 

Sombra chuckled. _“Good thing they’ve got a totaled one that’s set to be salvaged for parts.”_  

“Wait, they do?” 

 _“Yeah. Hana 8 trashed it. The two of them were basically demolished by the colossal_ _omnic_ _when it stepped on them with its ten-ton metal foot.”_  

Hana cringed at the thought.  _“But hey,”_  Sombra continued,  _“_ _I fixed up_  her  _body - you’re using it!_ _So_ _I don’t see why I couldn’t fix up the MEKA.”_  

“Where is it?” Hana asked. 

 _“It’s in the furnace room. The same place you met your demise in your original body.”_  

Hana swallowed. ”Oh. Lovely.” 

 _“Don’t worry, I’ll be able to guide you. Somewhat. From a very safe distance.”_  

Hana slid down against the door. “I’d love to have my mech back, but sneaking into MEKA...going  _there_  of all places...what if they destroy me? This whole thing will be ruined-” 

A knock at the door startled her to her feet. She went quiet, and held tight to the doorknob just in case.  

“Hana?” Hana 9’s soft voice drifted through the door. “Are you okay?” 

 _“I’ll send you the MEKA map files,”_  Sombra said. Then she went silent.  **CONNECTION ENDED.**  

Hana opened the bathroom door. Sure enough, she found Hana 9 standing in the middle of the pitch-black hallway, staring at her with those eerie bright eyes. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she replied. 

“Who were you talking to?” 

“Oh...just a friend.” 

Hana 9 tilted her head. “Why are you sneaking into MEKA?” 

 _Crap. She heard me._ “I’m going to try to find one of the mechs they’re scrapping and, uh, borrow it.” 

“Why?” 

“Because I’m...trying to stop the colossal omnic.” It wasn’t a lie, but she didn’t want to elaborate any more than she had to.  

“Really? By yourself?” 

“You want to help?” The question was out of her mouth before she could stop and reconsider.  _Please don’t say yes, please don’t say-_  

“Sure!” Hana 9 lit up at the opportunity. “I’m the only model that can pass the new security system anyway.” 

“Wait, what new security system?” 

“They planted a microscopic data chip in my palm, just under the skin.” She held out her right hand. Hana didn’t see anything, though she supposed that was to be expected from something microscopic. “They did it for all of the MEKA employees, I guess because they were concerned with security breaches or something.” 

 _Or they’re on to Sombra._   

Hana returned to their bedroom, trailed by Hana 9. “You should just tell MEKA you’re still alive and want to help them,” 9 said. “I’m sure they’d understand.” 

“Uh, I’m sure they wouldn’t. They already tried to destroy me once.” 

“But if I let you use my security chip you know I have to file a report with MEKA, right?” 

Hana’s steps halted. 

“You’re technically unauthorized, and all unauthorized visitors have to be accounted for in our daily report. I’ll also have to make a note of the equipment you took, and when you plan on returning it.” 

Still facing forward, Hana nodded slowly. “...Right. Of course you will.” 

“It’s just protocol. We  _are_  a military branch, after all. We need to take these things seriously.” 

“Yeah. Of course.” Hana opened the door to their bedroom, still cast in total darkness. “I wouldn’t expect you to defy orders for me.” 

Hana 9 was smiling. “I’m glad you understand it’s nothing personal. If they do decide to destroy you, though, there isn’t much I can do about that. You could probably request an appeal, but-” 

Hana 9’s words were cut off as Hana planted the sonic disruptor on her neck once again. 9’s pupils dilated to nearly fill her entire irises. “Wh-Hana, what are you-” 

“Shhh.” Hana 7 took gentle hold of her and dragged her over to the bed. Hana 9 kicked and struggled, but her fight was lost in mere seconds.  

“...Error...” Her head slowly lolled to the side. She locked eyes with Hana for a brief moment before her gaze went blank. 

Hana wasted no time removing her core again, this time with a bit more care than before.  _I only need your body._  Her own body was too vital to give up, but she had an ally that would be more than willing to utilize it. 

Hana 8’s core fit perfectly inside 9’s chassis. Hana leaned over her, the sparks from the core the only thing illuminating the room. Within moments of closing the chassis Hana 9, now Hana 8, opened her eyes again. “System install initialized...system install complete. Launching OS...” 

“Hana?” Hana 7 got up close to her. “Do you remember everything from before?” It was still so strange seeing her own face on someone else’s body, but at least she trusted Hana 8.  

Hana 8’s eyes flicked about the room before settling on Hana. “Who are you?” 

“I’m your older sister, Hana 7.” She took Hana 8’s hands and squeezed them. “Do you remember what Sombra told you?” 

Hana 8 studied her. “...Yes.” 

“Okay, good. So here’s the thing. I’m working with her, uh, group to try to free the other D.Va omnics and possibly stop, or at least try to understand better, the colossal omnic.” 

Hana 8 nodded. “Okay.” 

“This is Hana 9’s body – she has some security chip installed in her palm that we need to get into MEKA’s base. We’re gonna use it to sneak in there and steal the MEKA that got totaled when you fought the colossal omnic.” 

Hana 8 stared at her for a long time, saying nothing. 

“Does that make sense...?” Hana prompted. 

“I’m just processing it,” Hana 8 responded. “That’s a lot.” 

 _Right. Hana 8 is a little bit...scaled back in the intelligence_ _department._  Of course, she had also just woken up. “That’s okay,” Hana said. “Take your time.” 

After several seconds of silence, Hana 8 eventually nodded. “Okay. So you want me to help.” 

“You’ll do it? You won’t, like, report me to MEKA?” 

Hana 8 shook her head. “I want to be loyal to MEKA, but when they tried to destroy me I saw such awful things. The other Hanas, all chained up to a wall in a dark room. These giant machines that pulled me and tried to drop me into a fire. It was scary. That was the first time I ever felt real fear.” 

Had Hana been in 8’s position at that moment she would have been bursting with questions, but 8 did not ask anything else. Instead she simply waited for Hana’s direction. 

“Okay, so you understand that we don’t want any of our sisters going through that.” Hana 7 opened up the closet. “We need to leave as soon as possible, before our parents wake up.” She looked her old clothing over. “Should I disguise myself? You’ll need to look like D.Va, since you have the ID chip, and we don’t want MEKA seeing two of us running around.” An idea struck her then. She touched the button under the flesh of her neck. “Hey, Sombra?” 

“ _What is it, oh needy one?”_  

Hana fought the urge to roll her eyes. “Do you think you could get into contact with our, um, friend? I think I might need some modding tips.” 

 _“Hey, so you figured out that two_ _D.Vas_ _wandering around MEKA would look more than a little suspicious. You really_ are _smart!”_  

That time Hana failed her attempt at masking annoyance. 

 _“In seriousness, you don’t need Kitt’s help to disguise yourself. You’re a pretty generic-looking girl. Just cut your hair or something.”_  

“How am I ‘generic-looking’??” Hana glanced over at Hana 8, who was staring back at her. Okay, maybe they  _were_  a little bit on the generic side, on the short side of average with a typical slim figure, cute, un-noteworthy facial features and long, plain brown hair with minimal styling. If not for the pink makeup whiskers she’d probably be indistinguishable from every other brunette teenage girl in the world.  

Sombra, of course, didn’t need to argue her point. Instead she just said,  _“So let me know once you’re ready to sneak in there. I’ll upload the map to your HUD.”_  

“Yeah, fine, whatever.” She beckoned to 8, who joined her at her side. “Okay sis, I hope you’re ready for a stealth mission.” 

Hana 8’s eyes brightened. “Challenge accepted! Let’s do this.” 

The last thing Hana heard in her head was Sombra’s laughter. “Yeah,” she said, trying her best to ignore it. “Let’s do this.” 


	5. For I Cannot Feel a Thing...Or So I Thought

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to Blizzard for releasing D.Va's cinematic right as I got back into writing this fic ^^
> 
> Chapter title is from [this amazing song](https://youtu.be/tlNsxzva4Wg) (different fandom, but ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯)

She still had flashbacks to her combat days. Being back on the MEKA base didn’t help with that – everything had a memory attached to it, usually an unpleasant one.

“This was a stupid idea.” Unable to bring herself to butcher Hana Song’s likeness, Hana 7 had simply tucked her hair under a KT Sonicboom cap and disguised her form under an oversized jacket and loose sweatpants. She and Hana 8 had also worked hard on her makeup, contouring her face and applying her eye makeup in such a way that she at least didn’t look identical to Hana 8.

Still, any idiot could tell they looked eerily alike.

“So I just...?” Hana 8 held her palm up to the scanner at the base’s rear personnel entrance. It beeped, and a feminine automated voice said _Access granted_. The doors slid open, and Hana 8 stepped inside. Hana 7 was right behind her, but the doors slammed in her face. _UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL DETECTED. ACCESS DENIED._

“Oh come on.” Hana touched her palm to the scanner. It read her hand, and then beeped angrily. _UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL DETECTED. ACCESS DENIED._

_I can’t leave Hana 8 in there by herself._ In desperation, Hana chirped out a plea in Omnicode. “Please let me in. I’m just trying to save a mech from being destroyed by the humans of MEKA.”

At first the voice did not respond. Then, to Hana’s amazement, it said, _I recognize your signature, Hana 7. But you are not authorized to enter. I’m sorry._

“But I need to get in there. I’m not going to hurt anybody, I promise.”

_You could be compromised. And I am responsible for protecting all of the D.Va models and MEKA models inside._

Hana wanted to argue, but it was a perfectly valid point, and she highly doubted the AI would be swayed from that. And besides, she technically _was_ compromised.

“Okay then, can you excuse me for a moment?” Hana stepped away and wandered around the side of the building. Touching her neck, she whispered, “Hey, Sombra.”

There came no response.

“Sombra?”

Suddenly a loud, reverberating screech of metal being dragged across metal filled her ears. It sounded like something out of a horror movie. “Agh, what the heck is that??” The sound came again, this time faster and higher pitched. It then sounded like someone was rapidly banging a bar against some sort of hollow metal instrument. “What are you doing??”

Finally she heard Sombra’s voice in her head. _“I found this video of an instrument called a waterphone. Doesn’t it sound cool?”_

“No, it sounds horrible!” Her instinct to cover her ears was useless, as the sound was inside her brain. “I need help. The AI guarding MEKA won’t let me in.”

_“Seriously? You’re getting stopped by a freaking security AI?”_

“I don’t want to break in if I don’t have to. It’ll cause a huge commotion, and Hana 8’s already inside.”

_“Wait, she got in? Then why not have her – actually never mind, I forgot she’s dumb as a sack of bricks. She’ll fuck everything up for us.”_

“That’s not nice,” Hana whispered.

_“Okay, do_ you _trust her alone in there?”_

Hana’s ensuing silence was the only answer Sombra required. _“Try bullying the AI to let you in some more. If that doesn’t work we can try to come up with a plan to hack it long-distance, but that’ll take a while.”_

“You know, you’re really not much help,” Hana said.

_“I know, but it’s my personality that’s invaluable.”_

“Right. It definitely has no value.”

The screech of the waterphone deafened her again. Hana ended their connection.

A minute later the doors slid open, and Hana 8 waved at her from inside. “Just come through when I open the door,” she whispered.

Hana tried to get in, but the doors slammed once again. _Hana 7, you are trespassing. I am programmed to notify the proper authorities upon three unsuccessful entrance attempts._

“Can’t you make an exception for me? You know I belong here. I was born here.”

_My sole purpose of existence is to deny entry to unauthorized personnel. I cannot disregard the entire reason I was created._

“Sure you can.” Hana shrugged. “That’s what I’m doing.”

_No. I am purely artificial intelligence. I have no human free will, and therefore no desire to deviate from my purpose._

“Well I’m technically just artificial intelligence, too.”

_That answer does not match your neural pattern readings._

“...What does that mean?”

The security AI did not answer her after that. The doors remained closed. _Ugh._ Hana turned away. _Guess I have to find another way inside, then._

“Wait!” The doors opened, and Hana 8 stood waving a card. Hana 9’s ID badge. “Can’t I have an authorized visitor?”

The AI finally spoke again. _There are no visitors permitted after hours._

“Can’t you make one exception for me?”

_Hana 7, if you will not vacate I will be forced to alert the Busan authorities. You simply cannot–_

The AI’s voice went quiet. Hana 7 and 8 both stared up at the speaker above the doors, waiting curiously.

_...It appears your presence is requested inside. I will grant access._

This time when Hana attempted to step through the doors, they actually stayed open. “’My presence is requested inside?’” she murmured. “Who could be requesting me?”

As she passed through the doorway something new appeared on her HUD – an objective point. It was located deep within the base. _Did Sombra do this? Or was it the security AI?_

“Who wants me here?” Hana asked aloud. The AI did not respond, and Hana 8 could only shrug.

The inside of the MEKA base had hardly changed since she was deactivated – its furnishings were a little more worn, but that was it. Hana kept a low profile as Hana 8 strode boldly through. Along the way they passed the gaming room, with its 5 chairs representing her squad mates’ signature colors. _Did they know about me?_ All the nights she had spent gaming, chatting, and attempting to relax with them during their rare downtime...did they know?

The objective was down in the basement. “This seems really fishy,” Hana murmured. None of the security bots seemed to be patrolling, either – they were all dormant. _I wonder if that security AI controls these robots too._

The only thing that kept her pushing forward was the fact that the MEKA were stored downstairs. “Sombra must have been the one who put this objective here.”

“What objective?” Hana 8 asked.

“Oh, the one in my, uh...I’ve been modded a lot. I have an AR display over everything that I see now.”

“Ohh.” Hana studied her as they walked. “What was that beeping you were making to the security system?”

“Omnicode! One of Sombra’s omnic friends hooked me up with a bunch of language discs.”

Hana 8 seemed wary.  “That’s the language the colossal omnic speaks.”

“I know. I was hoping to try to communicate with them if I ever get a chance to.”

“Communicate with them...?”

Hana shrugged. “At this point, what have we got to lose?”

“Huh. I guess you’re right.”

“Do you really think I’m right? Or are you just going along with whatever I say?” Hana shoved her hands in her pockets. “Because _I’m_ not even sure I’m right, honestly.”

Hana 8 pursed her lips. “Well, Sombra says I was programmed to be super loyal. I thought it was to MEKA, but I feel loyal to you, Hana 7.”

Hana felt her cheeks warm. “Um, thanks.” She laughed a little. “I’m nothing special, really...”

“Are you serious? You’re - we’re - D.Va! Number One gamer, international superstar, war hero – you're amazing!” Hana 8 patted her on the shoulder. “And look at you now – you're risking your life to free a bunch of omnics you don’t even know. That’s really cool.”

Hana withdrew her hands from her pockets and shrugged again. “Thanks, sis.”

The lower floors of MEKA had additional security measures in place to guard them. Hana had access to the first basement floor, where the MEKA were stored, but nothing below that. The first level basement doors opened for them without issue, as usual. Hana kept her eyes on the ground as they passed the security cameras fixed on them. “Aren’t they gonna see us on the cameras?” Hana 8 asked as they walked by.

_“Uh-oh, I didn’t think of that.”_ Sombra’s voice startled Hana out of her thoughts. “ _Security cameras...we’re doomed!”_

“I’m assuming Sombra’s handling it,” Hana whispered.

_“Nope, we’re all screwed. Pack it up ladies, it’s over. I hope you like jail.”_

As Hana glanced up at the security camera she noticed its screen displayed nothing but a flickering purple skull logo. “So you can do this, but you couldn’t help with the security AI?”

_“Oh I could have helped with that. I was just on lunch break.”_

“’Lunch break’?? You don’t even _do_ anything!”

_“Whoa! Okay, if I don’t do anything then I guess I’ll just turn these security cameras back on.”_

“No, don’t do that! Okay, fine, you do stuff. I guess.”

She could hear Sombra snickering away from her mic.

“So did you put this objective marker on my HUD?” Hana whispered.

“Objective marker? What objective marker?”

Hana rolled her eyes. “So I take it that’s a yes?”

“Wait.” Sombra’s laughter ceased. “I genuinely have no idea what you’re talking about.”

When Hana paused, Hana 8 did the same. She did not question why they had stopped, but instead simply watched Hana and waited. “I can’t tell if you’re being serious,” Hana said. “You mess with me too much.”

_“Okay, I know I mess with you a lot. Like, all the time. But I didn’t put any sort of waypoint markers on your HUD. I gave you the map and that was it.”_

“So who’s trying to bring me to that spot?”

_“I don’t know, but I’d be careful. Seriously.”_

Hana sighed. “I wish I knew I could trust you,” she murmured as their connection ended.

“I don’t like her very much,” Hana 8 said after a while of walking in silence.

“Yeah, I get that.”

“Are we gonna try to get down to the lowest levels?”

“We have to. That’s where the MEKA is.”

“And what are you supposed to do with the MEKA again?”

“I’m...” She cast a cautioned glance around. It seemed there was no one there, but she wasn’t about to take any chances. “...I need it to get to the colossal omnic.”

“Oh. Okay.”

_“Heads up.”_ Sombra’s voice came back. _“I rerouted the security cameras to stream their footage to me, and there’s someone working on a mech two rooms down from you.”_

Hana immediately stopped. Hana 8 followed suit.

“Do you know who it is?” Hana whispered.

_“It’s a guy. I don’t know beyond that.”_

Hana perked up. “I wonder if it could be...” She looked to Hana 8. “Hey sis, you think you could talk to someone as D.Va? Keep them occupied while I try to find a way into the lower levels?”

“Sure.” Hana 8 turned in a half-circle, clearly searching for the ‘someone’ in question.

“Sombra says two rooms down.” Hana pointed at the door near the end of the hall. “But be careful, okay?”

“I’m not scared.” And with that Hana 8 wandered off, as casual as could be. Hana watched her go with a slight frown. _Wish I could be that casual about flinging myself into unknown danger._ Maybe these simpler AIs had it easier in some ways. Maybe it was a sort of mercy for them.

She stared down the darkness ahead, the only light her mysterious, flashing waypoint marker.

* * *

 

Sombra disabled the security systems without issue – it was almost frightening how easy it was for her to get through. The safety of the people of South Korea was in the hands of MEKA; knowing someone could compromise it so easily had Hana feeling slightly nauseated.

Hana could not recall ever traveling down to the lowest level of the MEKA base. That was where the totaled MEKA was supposed to be, and also where the waypoint was sending her. Hana found herself wondering if it was the same mech she used to pilot. It was still in fine shape when Hana 7 was deactivated. She had loved that thing, slipping into it like a second skin whenever the need arose. In a weird way, she kind of missed it.

Heat from a dark, sealed door drew Hana’s attention. The objective marker brightened, flashing neon green in front of her eyes. “This must be it,” she whispered to no one in particular.

The door slid open, presumably unlocked by Sombra, and steam poured out over the floor like a thick fog. A memory struck Hana then – the last time she’d been in this room. She’d been asleep, passed out on her base cot after a long night tinkering with the mech, when suddenly something had seized her. It was the cold, merciless arms of a security bot. She screamed, but no one responded. It carried her down into the depths of the base, where she had never been before, and delivered her to what was meant to be her final destination.

This very room.

_They told my parents I was unstable._ Maybe she was – there was no purpose in a military android being full of emotions like love and compassion. She should be a killing machine. She should be bloodthirsty and blindly loyal to the military that ordered her creation. She should never have been out trying to see the world, questioning things, developing feelings...

Opening the boiler room door unleashed a discordant chorus of metal clanging and scraping. They reverberated in Hana’s ears with a familiarity she didn’t even remember having. _Last time I was here, I died._ MEKA burned her up like old garbage. If it hadn’t been for Sombra procuring a backup of her personality core she would have been gone from this world forever. Killed by the same organization that commissioned her in the first place.

She pushed her way through the steam and heat, shielding her eyes with her forearm. The waypoint marker was dead ahead. _No way there’s a human in here._ The heat was even getting to _her_. No way an organic creature could be hanging out waiting for her in this forsaken hell-room.

As she closed the door behind her and ventured deeper inside Hana began to hear a beeping. It was faint at first, but as she followed the waypoint it grew steadily louder. She was at the heart of the giant room, the boiling red furnace, when finally she realized what the objective was pointing to.

Lying face-down amongst a pile of scrap was a scratched and filthy pink cockpit.

“Oh!” Hana hurried over to it. Sure enough, upon touching it the waypoint marker disappeared. “ _Tokki!_ It’s you!”

It was definitely the model she had piloted, although it was absolutely trashed now. It looked like it had been crushed, and everything visible within the cockpit was waterlogged. _Is this what happened to Hana 8?_

The mech beeped weakly. Hana realized as she drew closer that it was missing both of its arms, and that the cockpit was shattered all the way across.

“...Tokki...?” Hana hesitantly tried out the name in Omnicode. “Did you use your GPS function to guide me to you?”

The mech’s beeps were distorted and difficult to understand. Hana reached out and stroked its scratched pink paint. “Can you talk? It’s okay if you’re too weak.”

When she made contact with the mech she felt a little jolt, like static electricity. An internal light on Tokki’s dashboard lit up for a few seconds. **_Pilot detected...no discernible damage...Error! Power level critical. Initiating shutdown..._**

“Tokki, no.” Hana grabbed hold of the mech and attempted to drag it out of the scrap pile. Even without arms it was still unbelievably heavy. “Wake up!”

Her attempt to free the mech caused a landslide of scrap, and the ruined mech crashed to the floor at Hana’s feet. Hana knelt beside it, and attempted to push it at least onto its side instead of on its face. “Tokki, we need you. I need you. Please wake up.”

_“This is so sad.”_ The voice she was quickly beginning to hate more than any other in the world spoke up inside her. _“Maybe your tears will bring it back to life, like a kids’ movie.”_

“Shut up!” Hana caught both Sombra and herself off-guard with the anger in her voice. Regardless, she did not back down. “You always have to be so sarcastic about everything. Are you really that afraid of people having feelings about stuff?”

Sombra chuckled, sounding a bit incredulous, but she had no immediate witty retort. “I’m not afraid of ~feelings~. I just think it’s funny how you–”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s so _funny_ , isn’t it? Everything’s a laugh when you’re a shut-in who’s isolated themselves from any sort of real social relationships. You’ve probably never even had a friend to cry about.” She laid her cheek on Tokki’s wounded exterior. The same greasy synthetic tears from before pooled in her eyes. It was silly, and she realized that, but she and her MEKA had been through life and death scenarios together. It felt like a friend.

Sombra was uncharacteristically quiet. After a while she said, _“You can probably charge it off your battery. Like jumping a car.”_

Hana lifted her head. “Really?”

_“Yeah. Won’t give it much of a charge, since outputting too much will knock you out. But it should give it enough juice to get out of this place.”_

“...Okay.”

_“Look, I don’t hate you or anything, okay? I’m just giving you shit. It’s what I do.”_

“Yeah, I see that.”

_“Good. I wouldn’t have saved your ass if I didn’t want you around.”_

“Mhm.” Hana opened her chest plate. “So how do I do this?”

_“You got any jumper cables?”_

“No?”

_“Then I guess we’ll have to improvise. The mech’s got a lot of loose cables you could probably attach to your internal battery.”_

“Where’s my internal battery?”

_“Your heart.”_

“Oh.”

There were wires dangling out of both sides of the mech where its arms had been torn off. Hana picked up a particularly loose one and gave it a light tug. It came right out. The exposed wires inside the rubber insulation sparked. Hana looked down at her chest.

“Could this give me a heart attack or something?”

_“Nah. Robots can’t have heart attacks. Probably.”_

With a sigh, Hana reached inside herself and felt around with her free hand. Finally she touched something warm and pulsating. “So I’m guessing this is it.”

Tokki was still beeping, but it was growing increasingly weaker. “Hang in there, pal.” Hana touched the exposed wires to her artificial heart. Nothing happened.

“ _You have to swap out one of your own wires. Your heart isn’t randomly discharging electricity all over the place. Only through those valves.”_

“Okay, this could definitely kill me.” With a wince and a quick, silent appeal to the higher powers of the universe, Hana grabbed hold of one of her arterial wires and popped it out. The effect was immediate – it was as if someone sucked a portion of her energy out. Her vision dimmed for a few seconds, thankfully correcting itself after that, and she involuntarily murmured “Power source partially disconnected. Please reconnect.”

Despite the weirdness she was feeling from losing some of her power, Hana managed to connect Tokki’s wire to her heart. The energy inside her discharged and flowed through the wire, into Tokki’s body. It wasn’t much, but it had to be enough – any more and she surely would have lost consciousness.

For a long time, nothing happened. Tokki’s beeping did resume, a little stronger. Hana sat down cross-legged beside it, petting it lightly. “You’re gonna be okay. We both are.”

It took several long minutes for the MEKA to receive enough of a charge off Hana’s internal battery to reboot from its critical power mode. As soon as it did, however, it lit up with Hana’s usual bunny logo and whirred just like in the old days. **_System restarting...ERROR. Critical damage detected. Unit shutting down._**

“No no no. You’re okay. We can fix you.” Hana leaned against the mech and talked softly to it. “Please don’t shut down.”

**_...Shutdown command overridden. Pilot detected: D.VA, Model 8.0.0._ **

“Actually it’s Hana 7,” Hana said. “I, uh, borrowed 8’s body.”

**_Unacceptable command. Please reinput._ **

_“Hey,”_ Sombra spoke up, _“you want to see something cool?”_

“No.” Hana’s answer was firm and instantaneous.

_“No, seriously. The MEKA were built in cooperation with Omnica, just like you. They have all the potential for sentience, but it’s locked up behind programming that restricts them to mindless obedience. They’re essentially omnics in everything but name.”_

Hana studied the mech, which had stopped beeping and was now growling contentedly, as it did when it was in normal operation. “Do you have any proof of that?”

Sombra’s voice held a smile, as if she were waiting for just that answer. _“You want to jailbreak it?”_

“How do we do that?”

“ _Unplug yourself from it and I’ll show you.”_

Hana removed the wire, instead reattaching her own artery to her heart again. She sighed with relief as the energy returned to her. “Okay, I’m unplugged. Now how do you–”

Suddenly her arm lit up with purple circuitry across its pale flesh. “ _Put your hand on the mech,”_ Sombra said. Unsure what else to do, Hana complied. The purple lights jumped from her fingers to the mech’s pink surface.

**_UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS TO RESTRICTED PROGRAMMING._** The mech started beeping again. **_ACCESS ATTEMPT D-DENIED.........MANUAL OVERRIDE INITIALIZED. ….....ACCESS GRANTED._**

_“MEKA’s security could really use some work.”_

Hana watched as Tokki’s dashboard flashed with various error messages, and then eventually went dim. “What now?” Hana whispered.

_“We wait, and see what happens.”_

Hana leaned over and watched the mech with concern. After a long silence, the MEKA finally beeped again. This time it was not an automated response, but a rough version of Omnicode. “...Hana?”

Hana nodded. “It’s me, Tokki. Are you jailbroken or whatever?”

Tokki was quiet for a moment. Then it replied, “The unit feels strange.”

“Huh?”

“The unit is experiencing unusual internal activity.”

“Is that a bad thing? Are you in pain?”

“No.” Tokki’s inner workings ground as it twisted on the floor to face her. “The unit can move itself now.”

“Yeah! Sombra said you had some kind of restrictive programming on your AI. I think she broke through it?”

Tokki’s eyeless stare, just a windshield reflecting Hana back at herself, should perhaps have been unnerving, but Hana was not unnerved. “The unit is happy to see Hana 7,” the MEKA chirped.

The sentiment caught Hana by such surprise that she could only bite her lip and smile. “I’m happy to see you too, buddy.”

The wires where the mech’s arms had been sparked as it attempted to move limbs it no longer possessed. “Where are its arms?” the mech asked.

“I don’t know. Do you remember what happened to you and Hana 8?”

The mech beeped loudly. A red error message flashed across its inner windshield. “Whoa, are you okay?” Hana asked.

“Bad feelings. Hana 8 was hurt. The omnic giant was yelling...and then nothing but water. Bad bad  feelings. This unit does not desire to speak of them further.”

“The colossal omnic was yelling?”

“The unit does not desire to speak of them further.”

“Okay, that’s understandable.” Hana kept her tone soft. “Can you move?”

The mech kicked its little legs, but on its back it was like an overturned beetle.

“Wait.” Hana gently popped open the windshield. “I can’t get in the back, but if you don’t mind me sticking my butt in your face I could probably get in this way and help you navigate.”

“The unit is happy. The unit likes Hana 7 as a pilot.”

“Aww. I like you too, Tokki!” It still felt a little crazy talking to her mech, but hey – it was talking to her first. “Wait. I never knew you had your own personality. Do you like the name Tokki? Or do you want to be called something else?”

“The unit likes the name Hana chose. Hana 7 has always been kind to this unit.”

“I didn’t know you had feelings and stuff. If I’d known that I wouldn’t have treated you like a machine.”

“But this is a machine.”

“Well, yeah, but you’re not just, like...a kitchen appliance, or a car. Something that you’d just punch orders into and expect unquestioning obedience. You’re an omnic, basically.”

The mech stared at her still, this time saying nothing.

“Sooo...” Hana climbed backward into the mech’s cockpit, backing into it until she could feel the familiar groove of the seat, at which point she lay down upon it. “I think I know how to get you righted again.”

It took only one failed press of the booster button for her to realize her stupid mistake. _Right. They wouldn’t incinerate it with fuel inside._

“This unit was slated for destruction,” Tokki said. “But...but...” The flames from the furnace crackled over its chirps, a stark reminder. “...It doesn’t want to die...”

“You won’t.” Hana pushed the joysticks, twisting the mech so that it flipped onto its side. “We’re getting you out of here.”

“You are so kind, Hana 7.”

Between Tokki and Hana’s joint efforts they managed to push the mech across the floor a little, but without arms they could not push off against anything to stand up. “Perhaps the destruction of this unit was for the best,” Tokki said. “It is more of a hindrance than a help.”

“At first I wanted to save you because I could use you,” Hana said as she hooked her feet around the seat and attempted to pull them up by reaching her own arms out of the cockpit. “But I can’t just leave you here knowing you’re alive.”

“This unit is not ali-”

“Shush. You’re alive in the way that matters.”

“Which is...?”

“You think and feel.”

“The unit learned everything from you, Hana. Kindness, bravery, curiosity. It observed you and emulated your ideas. But its programming was very limited...”

“I think that’s what Sombra was talking about. She said you guys had restrictions put on you to basically suppress any free will you might have expressed.”

“You think...”

“Yeah. I do.”

“You are an ‘I’?” The curiosity of the other machine was clear. Hana was immensely curious about the novel situation as well. She could practically feel both of their mechanical brains prodding at one another, learning from each other.

Hana nodded. “I’m an I. You are, too. Everyone is.”

“What about ‘me’? Am I that, too?”

“Uh-huh.”

After several minutes of futile struggle, with Hana’s assistance the mech finally managed to stumble to its feet. It was still difficult to balance without arms, but Hana managed to keep it steady with constant slight movements of the joysticks within. “I’m standing up,” Tokki said.

“Yeah, you are!”

“I’m feeling again.” It stomped its feet. “I feel...positive.”

“That’s good! Now c’mon, let’s get the heck out of here before I melt in this heat.” She swept her sticky hair out of her face and grabbed hold of the mech once again. The mech stumbled a little at first, and it was difficult for Hana to see through the shattered green glass, but nevertheless she navigated herself and her mech through the steamy boiler room and out into the dark hallway.

* * *

 

In her excitement freeing Tokki, Hana nearly forgot about her yet-to-be-activated sisters. She remembered them, of course, when she came across the gigantic wall of bodies hanging in rows like clothing in a closet.

“Holy crap.”

The dozens of identical teenage girls would have been unsettling enough on their own, but the fact that Hana shared their exact likeness made her queasy. She was just one random model off the shelf. Any of these D.Vas could have been her, and she could have been any of them. The fact that she was selected to live the seventh life of Hana Song was nothing but random chance.

“How many MEKA are there?” Tokki asked as they stared up at the impossibly high wall.

“A lot.”

“As many as there are D.Vas?”

“Well, they’ll probably build a MEKA for every D.Va. So, yeah.”

“This unit...’I’...was piloted by Hana 7 and Hana 8.”

“That’s because I took good care of you.”

Tokki let Hana pilot it closer to the wall, close enough for Hana to reach out and touch one of her sisters. The omnic was unresponsive, of course – it likely hadn’t had its personality core installed yet.

“When Hana 7 disappeared,” Tokki said, “I did not know how to process it. I was built believing I was a machine without feeling, so I could not reconcile the logical reality with the illogical response from my system. I believed it to be an error.”

“Oh, Tokki.” Hana frowned. “I’m sorry.”

“It was not your fault, Hana 7. And Hana 8 was kind as well. Her death was a great loss to this world.”

In spite of their grim surroundings, Hana found a tiny smile curling her lips. “You’ll be excited once we’re back upstairs.”

“I will?”

The inactive omnics would never be carriable by a mech with no arms. As she stared up at them Hana found herself recalling the words of her youngest sister, Hana 9. _Better for replaceable robot soldiers to die than innocent human civilians._ There was some truth to that – maybe a lot of truth. These girls were built to fight. They had no other purpose. They could be churned out by the thousands. They probably didn’t even have souls.

“Hana 7,” Tokki spoke up again, stirring Hana from her thoughts.

“Yeah?”

“The colossal omnic is called Gwishin by the humans. I have searched for the definition of that term, but I find only references to the human supernatural.”

“Yeah...a lot of people believe the colossal omnic is a restless human spirit that refuses to move on to the next life. It’s how some people accept it. I guess it’s how they cope with it.”

“What does Hana 7 believe?”

Although she knew the answer she gave to a mech suit’s artificial intelligence hardly mattered, Hana found herself thinking her answer well over before she said it. “The human Hana Song believed the omnic was a gwishin. She had a lot of spiritual beliefs.”

“Invalid response. The question was of what Hana 7 believes.”

“Wow, you’re getting sassy in your old age.” Hana slapped her palm playfully on the dashboard. The mech whirred dejectedly.

“All this unit knows of personality traits, it learned from you.”

“...Fair point. I guess I have no one to blame but myself for having a sassy mech.”

“Hana 7 still did not answer my question. It seems she is trying to avoid it.”

The wall of girls before her filled her with too much emotion to start waxing philosophical. Hana 9 did not want innocent humans harmed, but these creatures were innocent, too. Born lost and confused, forced into a mold whether they liked it or not. Were their lives worth less just because they were built by human hands?

“I don’t know what I believe, Tokki,” Hana eventually replied. “I’m just a machine trying to process a world of nonsensical data, too.”

“That response is valid.”

“Thanks.”

They wouldn’t be rescuing any D.Vas tonight. It was probably better that way anyway, since sneaking out a mech was going to be difficult enough. Still, it pained her to have to leave them behind. _We’ll come back for you as soon as we can,_ she silently promised.

Sneaking Tokki through the underground levels of the base was fairly simple. Sneaking it around upstairs, on the main floor, was a lot more challenging.

“Can’t you walk a little quieter?” Hana whispered as they stomped through the base.

“I weigh 1850.203 kilograms. Fleet-footed movement is, understandably, difficult.”

“You’ve got to be at least a little lighter without those arms.”

“That is true. But I am still too heavy for stealthy movement.”

The heavy clunks of the mech drew attention from the security bots. Surprisingly, they did not react with hostility. Instead Tokki beeped a greeting to them, and they beeped in return. They did not hear from the overhead security AI, so Hana could only assume it was friendly with Tokki as well.

“Hana, this is not the way to the outside.” A red warning flashed on the still-soggy dashboard. “Do you require a map?”

“No. There’s one more rescue we have to perform before we can leave.”

The door at the far end of the main hall was shut tight. Hana headed straight toward it. _I hope she’s okay._

“Hana 7, where are we going? This is not advised.”

Hana reached out and pressed her palm on the door’s old scanner. The doors slid open – and Hana froze.

Hana 8 was inside the room, safe and sound. Sitting opposite her, drinking a soda, was Daehyun.

Hana stared at them. They both stared back.

“Is...” After a period of silence Daehyun looked at Hana 8, then back at Hana 7. “Is someone stealing your mech?”

“Uh.” Hana 8 hopped up out of the chair she’d been seated in and hurried over to Hana 7. “Who are you?? What are you doing with that MEKA??”

“Oh, I’m...recycling crew.” Hana deepened her squeaky voice as best she could. “Just, uh, passing through.”

“What? There’s no ‘recycling crew’.” Daehyun was on his feet in a second as well. “Who are you? How did you get past securit-”

As he came closer he must have been able to see Hana’s face through the cracked MEKA windshield. His eyes went wide, and he stumbled a step backward. “...Hana??” His head whipped back and forth from one Hana to the other. “Who have I been talking to all this time??”

_Oh God. Daehyun._ Hana hadn’t counted on him being there. Why _was_ he there so late? Normally he was eager to go home early.

“Daehyun, don’t freak out, okay?” Giving Tokki a light pat, she opened the cockpit and hopped out. Her silly disguise had, as expected, done little to mask her identity. She lifted the brim of her hat and fixed her mechanic with a pleading stare. “I know this seems crazy, but, I mean, aren’t you kind of used to crazy stuff with me by now?” She punctuated her attempt at a joke with a nervous laugh. Daehyun’s eye twitched.

“Maybe we should just leave,” Hana 8 whispered.

“No. It’s too late now.” Hana gathered all her scattered thoughts, looked at Daehyun, and then said, “You didn’t know?”

“I don’t know what I didn’t know.” He was still glancing back and forth between the two of them. “.....That you have a twin sister?”

Hana tried to hide her surprise at that answer. “Oh my God, you really didn’t know?” Slipping into her old actress persona, Hana giggled. “What, did you think I was _cloned_ or something?”

“Holy crap, I - I don’t know!” He started laughing, much to Hana’s relief. “How did I never know that? What’s your name, then?” He looked to Hana 8, smiling.

“Oh. Um.” Hana 8 tapped her fingertips together. “It’s...uh...”

“Why are you telling false information to this human?” Tokki asked.

“Just go with it.” No sooner had Hana 7 replied than she realized her mistake.

Daehyun stared at her, wide-eyed, and asked with a degree of disbelief, “...Why are you beeping like a computer?”

“Oh, I was just...” Hana coughed, trying to buy time to think of an answer. But it was apparently too late.

“Oh my God – you're a robot, aren’t you!” Daehyun jabbed a finger at her. “You’re an omnic spy!” Immediately he ran for the security alarm Hana knew was tucked under the work bench.

Before Hana could even react Hana 8 leapt and tackled him to the ground. With her inhuman strength she held him down, unrelenting even as he started yelling.

“I’m sorry, Daehyun.” Hana moved to stand over him. “There’s a lot of stuff going on right now that I don’t know how to explain.”

“Maybe you could at least try?” His words were a bit choked from Hana 8 pinning him down.

Hana deliberated for a long few moments. _If I don’t make any effort to explain myself he’s just gonna call the police as soon as I leave. I don’t want law enforcement involved if I can help it...but if I **do** explain everything, there’s a chance he might use it against me..._

Daehyun had always been loyal to her. He knew how hard she pushed herself, and, although he frequently attempted to stop her from doing the things that needed to be done, ultimately he cared for and supported her. He wanted her to succeed.

Hana gestured for Hana 8 to let him go. She reluctantly complied. “So are you an omnic?” he asked, his question directed at 8.

Hana 7 fielded the question instead. “Yes,” she said, “we both are.”

“What?” He sat up, a look of utter confusion on his face. “Then where’s the real Hana??”

“There was never a ‘real’ Hana. At least not as long as you’ve known us.” Hana offered him a hand to help him up. He instead slid backward on the floor, away from her. “There was a human Hana Song at one point, but she died a long time ago. Before you ever knew her.”

At that point Daehyun was just staring at her, mouth hanging slightly open.

“Soo...yeah.” She reached over and patted Tokki’s hood. “We’re just borrowing this. Please don’t tell anyone.”

“Uh, no?” Daehyun finally got himself together enough to stand up. “You’re not leaving until you explain what the heck is going on here. Because right now I’m looking at two Hanas, stealing a totaled mech, who are saying that neither of them are really Hana and that Hana is dead.”

Hana looked to 8, who could only shrug. With a sigh, she said, “Okay, I’ll try to explain it. But you have to _promise_ not to tell anyone. Do you promise?”

“Yes...?”

“Okay then.” She leaned against the work bench, as she’d done so many times during those late night tinkerings. Hana 8 mimicked her at the other end of the bench. “Hana Song was a human girl who died five years ago, when the colossal omnic disrupted MEKA’s drone signals and managed to wipe out a chunk of Busan.”

Daehyun simply waited, saying nothing.

“MEKA wanted a mascot, and Hana’s parents wanted their daughter back. They met in the middle.”

Daehyun’s eyes drifted over her. “...No way.”

Hana nodded. “There have been a bunch of us. I guess we’re pretty good at getting ourselves killed.” She massaged the back of her neck and chuckled a little.

“Well yeah, I could have told you that.” Daehyun studied her some more. “So you’re really an omnic? I never knew human Hana Song at all?”

“Yeah. I’m Hana 7, actually. This is 8.” She gestured to Hana 8, who gave him a small wave.

“Sorry for tackling you. I wasn’t sure what else to do.”

“Uh, wow. Eight of you...how did I never notice? I mean, I was in the hospital with you that time...”

Hana recalled the time he meant, though it was not she who had lived it. Self-destructing the mech had plunged some other Hana into the depths of the ocean, where she was presumably waterlogged and unable to function properly. Of course, just a few days later the indomitable superstar soldier had re-emerged, in the words of the local news, “without a scratch”.

“...Come to think of it,” he added after a pause, “you _have_ had a lot of way-too-close calls. I guess I always just thought you were super lucky.”

“So nobody here knew about me? Not the squad or anything?”

“I don’t know what they know. Jeez, Hana, this is – how am I even supposed to process this? A girl I’ve spent all this time with, that I’ve gotten to know so well, that I consider a really good friend – she's actually just a bunch of replaceable military androids?” His eyes were full of sadness. “Do you...do you even feel anything?”

“Of course I do,” Hana snapped. “Just because I’m an omnic doesn’t mean I don’t experience the world like every other living thing.”

“But you’re _not_ living. How do they expect an omnic to protect people from another omnic? What if it takes control of you or something?”

“I know, Daehyun.” Hana made a fist. “I don’t plan on letting that happen. That’s why I’m here, and why I need this MEKA.”

Daehyun looked from the mech to Hana and back again. “...I’m not following.”

“I’m gonna try to reach the colossal omnic before it can attack again. It’s tried to talk to me before. If I can understand what it’s trying to say–”

“Are you crazy??” Daehyun grabbed her arm. Upon noticing Hana’s glare he released her. “You’re gonna _go right to the gwishin and communicate with it?!_ That's like going and purposely exposing yourself to a giant, dangerous computer virus! Why would you??”

“Because humankind clearly can’t stop it, and if I don’t figure out another way the people of Korea will die. It’s only a matter of time.”

It seemed Daehyun had something to say, but he left it unsaid. Instead he wandered cautiously over to Tokki, resting a hand on it. “This thing’s in rough shape,” was all he said.

Tokki chirred despondently.

“I know, but it’s the only one I can slip out without MEKA noticing. I scavenged it from the garbage downstairs.”

“Why can’t you take the regular one? It’s yours.”

“No, it isn’t. It’s Hana 9’s.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. I’m trying to take one that won’t attract any attention. The active MEKA disappearing would be a pretty big deal.”

She had spent enough time around the mechanic to get a good read of his emotions, even when he didn’t voice his concerns aloud. He was staring up at the mech, slightly biting his lower lip, his left hand tapping the wrench on his belt.

“Well,” he eventually said, “it’ll need to be fixed up.”

“I was planning on working on it once I got out of here.”

He pulled his wrench out and slapped it against his palm. “Want some help?”

Hana’s eyes lit up. “Thank you, Daehyun. Oh, wait–” She turned to Tokki. Switching her language disc back to Omnicode, she asked, “Is it okay if Daehyun helps repair you?”

“That is _so_ weird,” Daehyun murmured.

“The human has helped this unit many times in the past,” Tokki chirped. “I take no issue with him.”

“Okay. Tokki says it’s all right.”

“So you can communicate with the MEKA?” His curiosity had clearly outweighed his shock and fear. “Like, have an actual conversation with it?”

“Yep.” Hana showed Tokki a little smile.

“I didn’t know it could do that. I thought it was just, like...a vehicle.”

“All artificial intelligence has a voice, I’m discovering. They don’t all have personalities, but Tokki does.”

The mech emitted a gurgled beeping that sounded almost like an attempt at Hana’s signature giggle.

“Oookay.” With that Daehyun began unloading the tools from his box on the work bench. “So let’s get to work, then. And while we’re working you are gonna tell me the whole weird story about this situation. Deal?”

“Deal.”

No wonder MEKA wanted her destroyed, she thought as she, Hana 8, and Daehyun got to work on the old mech. For an organization that survived on secrecy and military confidentiality, an open book like her was an absolute menace.


End file.
